"Not Jordan Peterson" reciting the first verse of "Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend," posted here -- if this works -- because it's still funny (and because it got deleted/disabled from SoundCloud.) You can read about it here (scroll down.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2019 01:22 PM
Well, folks, I must admit defeat. I had intended to keep up at least a tally here, a list of links, noting in this space all my posts in all the various places that I post things. That's ideally how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2018 04:13 PM
"There shouldn't be a rock and roll Hall of Fame." Agreed. That acknowledged, Bill (not that Bill Wyman) Wyman has a go at ranking the Rock Hall "inductees", with capsule summations of each act interleaved with a surprisingly absorbing account...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 04:14 PM
Minor secrets of "Our Love Will Last Forever and Ever" -- praise Odin! I hope your Wodensdaeg proceeds apace, if apace means what I think it does. This has never been regarded as one of the "top tunes" in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2018 12:33 AM
Gesælig Wodensdaeg to ēow, once again. Minor secrets! "At Gilman Street"! Reveal'd!!! Today's video is the second of two music videos made by Byron's neighbor (that's literally all I know about him, and it); the other one, for "Surfin'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2018 05:43 PM
Professor Josh Blackman was heckled by protesters at CUNY. 'A student shouted out “Fuck the law.” This comment stunned me. I replied, “Fuck the law? That’s a very odd thing. You are all in law school...' If any of these...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2018 12:24 AM
It's Woden's day, and the sched calls for video so... "Cingular Wireless (Worse than Hitler)" - what a song. It was never officially recorded or released, but it proved weirdly popular when I played it solo and remains one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2018 11:04 PM
Time for another "minor secrets" post, for Odin, for Darkness, for Humanity. As I've noted before in various spots, this tune, conceived as a "theme song" for my third novel King Dork Approximately, more or less accidentally sparked the launch...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2018 01:12 PM
A song for Oðinsdagr once again. And it's back to Southampton, UK, Summer of 1992. This is a Partridge Family cover that we played in most every set in those days, and was one of the songs on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2018 07:35 PM
"Caravaggio was a murderer, and maybe even a bad person. But I only want to look at some paintings, not marry the guy..." I am interviewed by Articulate....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2018 11:23 PM
"Surfin' Cows" was one of three cow-themed (or rather, cow-named) surfy instrumentals from Jon von's old Boston band the Sacred Cows, brought with him when he headed out to California after college. The others were "Skatin' Cows" (which wound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2018 06:26 PM
"Virtual media’s greatest strength is also its biggest flaw: you can’t trip over it. Easily stored, easily forgotten." I teased this tweet out into a sort of essay about Show Business, records, music blogs, Platforms, archaeology, and "virtuality."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2018 06:24 PM
I did a brief informal poll about which song to "minor secrets of" today, and it was close but this beat "Surfin' Cows" by two votes. "Surfin' Cows" will have to wait for another Wodensdaeg. So now it's back...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2018 11:42 PM
I used to be a pretty scrupulously youtube-only guy, but, well, there's been some trouble in the relationship (long story, faults on both sides, etc.) and while we're not breaking up, I'm not getting any younger and in the absence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2018 06:25 PM
[A version of this post that includes the pictures referenced may be viewed here. While this blog limps along and I'm trying to organize a solution for the future, I'm still attempting to register significant posts here so I can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2018 04:16 PM
Every so often I attempt a finger-picking arrangement of one of my old songs. I’m not the greatest picker in the world, and there’s nothing particularly fancy or difficult about the arrangements, but it is really quite a challenge...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2018 10:05 PM
Some decades ago there was a society-wide spasm of utter madness in which obviously innocent people were accused of being Satanists, rounded up, and imprisoned by the hundreds. Some of these people still rot in prison to this day, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2018 07:22 PM
So, I've recently started trying to stick to a rough schedule in all my posts to various places, something that makes more sense than my previous randomly-determined model. (e.g. seventeen posts in a row on a night of insomnia, followed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2018 09:44 PM
You may have noticed this blog has been ailing and limping along for some time, and a bit more than previously since December 2017. A lack of allocated disk space, that apparently cannot be increased, has recently prevented me from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2018 09:03 PM
Gesælig æsc Wodensdaeg to þe! Gonna shift away from Southampton '92 to Hamburg '92, because it's Valentine's Day and "Love American Style" is an appropriate song for the occasion. Sort of. (LAS was in that Southampton set but the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2018 03:51 AM
... and posted it, sharing many examples....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2018 03:48 AM
Another song (for Odin) from that 1992 show in Southampton. Rich Levene was there and says his diary indicates there were 60 people at the show, which sounds/looks about right. They really were a wild, exuberant bunch. They shouted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2018 04:58 AM
A song for Woden. Happy Wednesday. This is from a show in Southampton, England, July 8th 1992, where we played in front a few dozen wild, shouting, vibrating teenagers, one of whom happened to have a running camcorder in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2018 09:36 PM
I've already posted 15 of the 16 songs on this set individually. The remaining one is the set opener, "I Just Wanna Do It with You," and since the tape starts somewhere during the front bit of it, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2018 12:57 AM
Pawing through the archives for Monday's post. An essay about The Catcher in the Rye as an icon of conventional rebellion and "angst therapy". (A version of this self-promoting obituary of J. D. Salinger, if “obituary” means what I think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2018 03:34 PM
The future of this rickety old blog is a bit uncertain at the moment, though I'd like to keep it going if I can. (I've been doing it for 16 years or so, and it can be a useful reference,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2018 05:32 PM
Praise Odin, a video for Wednesday. (Okay it's Saturday now, but I originally posted this in all the places on Wednesday, in keeping with my alleged new schedule of posting video to my youtube channel each Wednesday, in honor of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2018 04:32 PM
A guy who had seen a 1980 show in NYC commented on the original essay posted on Medium. Here is the one and only unique thing I remember that everybody else seems to have forgotten or not noticed. During opening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2018 03:17 PM
Pawing through the archives, I came across this old post documenting my unlikely participation in a star-studded televised awards show banquet. The most significant part was meeting the delightful Judy Blume for the first time (and our risqué banter that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2018 03:14 PM
In October of 1979, this guy Mike and I made a pilgrimage to see the Clash at Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. I had just turned fifteen, and I had thought of myself as “punk,” sort of, for at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2018 09:30 PM
Signature tune, I suppose, and all that that entails. The amp going out in the middle of the song was a fairly typical mid-tour event. Those amplifiers, God love 'em, were exceedingly fragile and not necessarily soldered together all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2017 05:36 PM
I was raised Catholic, but it was a hippie-dippie California kind of Free to Be You and Me Public Television Catholicism without much content, so I first heard about the Slaughter of the Innocents from this Scott Corbett book, quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2017 04:55 PM
I am unable to post pictures to this blog at present, but you're interested in seeing an early 15th Century manuscript illuminated to depict John the Apostle and Evangelist at the moment of receiving the Revelation you can view it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2017 04:46 PM
There was an image posted here but I've deleted it in an attempt to save the archives here. You may view it here if you like. From this point on in time and up the page, by the way, all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2017 06:09 PM
Image from Bethlehem deleted, posted here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 25, 2017 05:14 PM
My buddy Will found this on a VHS tape (all it had on it was two MTX songs from this same performance and the Quincy punk episode.) If it's not obvious, the method of transfer was his taking a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2017 12:21 AM
When you make a sacrifice you're supposed to get a wish... another one of these from '98. T he kernel of this song was just the idea of playing around with metaphors for love and loss and such, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2017 05:14 PM
Manuscript page of St. Jerome's letter to Pop Damasus deleted, viewable ....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2017 04:37 PM
Individually and in the co-ordinated and purposive groups which constitute a healthy society, men and women display a certain capacity for rational thought and free choice in the light of ethical principles. Herded into mobs, the same men and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2017 07:02 PM
Another one of these from Seattle, '98. I was quite surprised to see this song in the set. It was not often performed, that I recall, by any line-up. (Maybe it was a request that we tried to "wing"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2017 05:18 PM
Since Lauberdemont’s time, evil has made some progress. Under Communist dictators, those who come to trial before a People’s Court invariably confess the crimes of which they have been accused—confess them even when they are imaginary. In the past,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 06:58 PM
This video is from a November '98 show at Seattle's RKCNDY, via Amy Yambor who used to work there and who handed me a DVD transfer of it when we played NYC a couple weeks ago. Pretty good set,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2017 03:28 AM
I've always liked this unassuming little song, but I'm a bit surprised at how popular it is. (Maybe it's because of the nutty video?) The recording, as with many songs on Revenge Is Sweet but possibly most of all,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2017 06:37 PM
And Montaigne concludes with one of those golden sentences which deserve to be inscribed over the altar of every church, above the bench of every magistrate, on the walls of every lecture hall, every senate and parliament, every government...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2017 07:00 PM
Image deleted, viewable here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2017 03:16 PM
Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding-- more rewarding, in many ways, than even concupiscence or avarice. Whoremongers and money-grubbers find it hard to feel very proud of their activities. But partisanship is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2017 04:37 PM
I've written a bit about this song qua song recently (when I posted the solo guitar version.) I've always thought the video, by my old pal Jennifer Kaufman, transcended the song and turned it into a sort of work...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2017 11:55 PM
Image of Léonard of Noblac deleted, viewable here. "The story is told that Léonard was a 5th century devout who lived in the town of Nobiliac and that he wished to emulate the sanctity of Saint Remi, who was granted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2017 02:44 PM
This looks like a very interesting book, and I know this feeling well: O’Gorman’s interest in the deconstruction of historical memory was stirred when he visited Mycenae with his girlfriend and looked at what was advertised as the grave of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2017 01:19 PM
(Cross-posted at Medium, with photos.) Earlier today, mostly because I had seen an article that mentioned cupcakes, I started thinking about cupcakes, and social media'd these lyrics: ...and you're my cute little melon ball, my Lawry's Season Salt, you're my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2017 02:14 AM
(This is cross-posted, by the way on Medium.com with more pictures if you'd care to look.) I’m not sure exactly what Chris Appelgren had in mind back in 1999 when he approached me with the idea of participating in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2017 06:18 PM
Came across this photo while looking for something else. That's Kevin Army's grandma's guitar, I believe. If the camera time stamp date is correct, this is from the month before we started recording Revenge Is Sweet. There's a set...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2017 03:07 AM
But afterwards at the command of the exorcist, he putteth on a humane shape very Beautifull, Inflaming Men with womens Love, and women with mens love, and causeth them to shew themselves Naked, if it be desired, &c. Happy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2017 09:13 PM
This is a mid-70s SG Standard that I hardly ever play because it currently lives at my friend Jen's house. Because there are just too many damn guitars in my tiny apartment, plus I think she plays it sometimes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2017 03:46 PM
So, the tl;dr of this is: if you're not going to be in Italy for the Dr. Frank shows in July, you can still get the shirt via Sounds Rad. Details are below, but you can sign up here:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2017 03:31 PM
Morning read: all the Beatles songs ranked. Ranking shmanking, I don't really care about that, but unlike whoever wrote that Rolling Stones list a ways back, Bill Wyman (not *that* BW) has interesting things to say in the capsule reviews...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2017 04:59 PM
Like so many of the things we've done over the years, the "Mr T Experience? Nein Danke!" shirt design was a bit of a misfire. A parody of a seemingly ubiquitous anti-nuclear power campaign logo, it seemed funny, slightly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2017 08:58 PM
Dork Gallery here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2017 04:00 PM
Morning read. I dug up this old, much re-read Paul Berman article because of a discussion on Facebook, and instantly got sucked into it again. It's something close to the Platonic ideal of the cultural-political-historical critical essay and it basically...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2017 05:13 PM
Dork Gallery. "Balbum"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2017 10:03 PM
I posted this on the Facebook thing: When a public university incorporates the "rioters' veto" into its de facto policy on doling out selective permission to speak on campus, it amounts to viewpoint discrimination that seems impossible to square with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2017 02:20 PM
BBC wheels out Erica Jong to riff on Girls, and this is one of the things she says, of the characters: Her heroines have been seen as ‘unlikeable’ – does anybody ever find a male hero ‘unlikeable’? Never! Whether it’s...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2017 10:40 PM
Yesterday was the release day for MTX Shards Volume 2. This 2nd volume of the Shards compilation completes the extant MTX digital catalog, volume 1 and 2 containing all the released tracks that were "orphaned" when we re-configured the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2017 02:41 PM
From here. And speaking of which: ...and on the covers playlist (which is pretty well stocked with "Hitlers" at present) it goes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2017 09:48 PM
So, our four shows with Teenage Bottlerocket and Nobodys went great and I had a lot of fun doing them. As always, I really enjoyed talking to all the "lifers," i.e. longtime MTX fans, each of whom shared detailed accounts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2017 05:34 PM
It's a bit strange to hear people laughing at these lines, as I've played this song thousands of times, but usually in front of audiences who have already heard, memorized, and tattooed these lyrics on their hearts and souls....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2017 07:15 PM
This is so depressing. I weep for the future. @jordanbpeterson at @McMasterU. cc: @joerogan @SamHarrisOrg @RubinReport pic.twitter.com/s3lkEDnd8N— Lalo Dagach (@LaloDagach) March 17, 2017 When you guys see stuff like this, do you think back to your college years and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2017 02:47 AM
That "sneak peek" thing is out of date (I actually took this photo at the Gilman "Lookouting" show in January where we had these handbills in advance of the shows' announcement.) Still, it's a show. More shows listed here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2017 07:44 PM
There was a time when I had managed to collect almost the entire Chiswick Records catalog, leaving out duplicates and re-presses, with only a few missing items. I would say about half of this collection remains in my possession. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2017 01:06 PM
Show update... the (only) new thing at the moment, as you can see, is that we're doing one of the club shows at this year's Punk Rock Bowling fest in Las Vegas. Maybe more to come, we'll see. Cool...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2017 08:21 PM
Except that starting today (Feb. 28, '17) King Dork Approximately the Album is available in general digital release. That means the sound files are officially decoupled from the book for those who want them decoupled, and are available to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2017 04:42 PM
Thanks to everyone who came out the shows in Houston and San Antonio over the weekend. As with most of the cities we've been visiting here and there over the past couple of years, these were both places we...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2017 01:09 AM
"You read the magazines?" I said. "So do I," Sally Reine informed me. "My old man gets heaps of them from the States. I like the detective-story ones, where the characters aren't allowed to swear, and the Chicago gangster...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2017 10:02 PM
Dave from the Four Eyes!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2017 09:08 PM
Here's the current show list again, updated with buy links for tickets. Thurs. Feb. 9: Books & Brews II. Dr. Frank solo/acoustic, with Kepi, and DJ Sid Presley. "Daly City’s Department of Library and Recreation Services presents Books &...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2017 06:00 PM
This is the next thing coming up: me, Kepi, DJ Sid Presley, beer, and German food on Thurs. 2/9, 6PM at Cafe Doelger, 101 Lake Merced Blvd, Daly City, California 94015. $25, free for non-drinkers, all ages welcome. Also,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2017 06:08 PM
Hey how's it going? How've you been? Oh, that's nice or too bad, depending. Another show list. I haven't listed any of this stuff here before, though the truly new ones are the shows in April with Teenage Bottlerocket...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2017 06:26 PM
As usual, I'm posting this updated little list of upcoming shows a bit tardily, and mostly as a way of making sure I know what I'm doing. If I'm missing anything (which is quite possible) someone let me know. We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2016 08:44 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2016 05:45 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2016 02:59 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2016 06:54 PM
I get a surprising number of messages asking when and if KDATA will be available CD. I thought CDs were dead. Anyway, the answer is, there are no plans to manufacture CDs, though there will be a really nice vinyl...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2016 03:58 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2016 05:39 PM
(You can buy this digital album direct from Sounds Rad, or from Amazon or iTunes if you prefer.) 1. King Dork Long before it was a book, it was a song. The basic tracks for this one were recorded...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2016 09:39 PM
@frankportman pic.twitter.com/d5f6bSrQ3d— Kent Duffy (@kentduffy) October 31, 2016...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2016 09:21 PM
So the tl;dr of this is: we just put up a new, MTX digital album on iTunes/Amazon/etc. It is volume one of what will be a two volume set containing all the extra songs that have appeared on various...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2016 03:29 PM
@frankportman Needed KDA, decided that I might as well order the full set! :D pic.twitter.com/l7T8Jwi8C3— Spoopy Dingo (@JohnDingoFromIA) October 30, 2016...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2016 04:10 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2016 05:20 PM
This is Dan Potthast of the band MU330 among others. Dude writes great songs....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2016 02:04 PM
No new listings from the last time I posted the list. I just deleted the Las Vegas shows which already happened. They were fun. I hope to be able to announce more dates soon. Sat- Nov 12th- Santa Ana,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2016 01:54 PM
(Here she is ten years ago, btw. Glad she stuck with it.) If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2016 07:18 PM
Steven Bickmore is a professor of English at the UNLV College of Education (formerly of Louisiana State University) and a specialist in Young Adult literature. He pretty much singlehandedly forced King Dork into academic legitimacy through his graduate program...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2016 05:59 PM
Ed Masley of the Arizona Republic posts the video and puts "High School Is the Penalty..." on a list of 10 songs you need to hear right now. And if Ed or anyone who has read this were in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2016 04:37 PM
...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2016 03:35 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 02:29 PM
(This was also posted on the Sounds Radical blog.) Frank Kozik is one of the greatest poster artists in the history of rock and roll. His work revolutionized the "rock concert" poster in a fundamental way, and whether you realize...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 01:04 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2016 02:41 AM
Just a quick show update here. The new things are (a) the kind of last minute Las Vegas evening show on the flier at the Golden Tiki, and the "Lookouting" at Gilman. (Advance tickets for the Saturday night at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2016 02:38 PM
It took some doing, but this nearly 60 year old guitar is finally resurrected and back in my arms again. The guy who sold it to me 25 years ago told me its previous owner had been Johnny Guitar...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2016 08:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2016 06:13 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2016 01:22 AM
Just a few links from the past week. --This review (by Julie River) of King Dork Approximately the Album appeared on the punknews.org site. I've been covered in one way or another by quite a few big, important publications...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2016 08:00 PM
If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it to me. Buy the book here, or here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2016 03:31 PM
I met Kat at our show at the Blue Lamp in Sacramento over the weekend. Fun girl. If you'd like to be in the Dork Gallery take a picture of yourself pretending to read my book and send it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2016 04:25 PM
Bradley Skaught is a true blue singer-songwriter and rock and roller, something that is pretty hard to sustain long-term in this day and age. I first became aware of him because my old bandmate Aaron plays bass in his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2016 03:30 AM
I met Alana at a public library visit in Nashville last year along with her dad and brother. Cool kid, looks good with a book. Her dad is a writer and does the band Vista Blue, who did this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2016 07:12 PM
Michele (with one L) is the regular co-host of the great rock and roll podcast Long Gone Loser and is a top gal and all around good egg. Only met her just recently but she's already one of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2016 12:54 AM
Kevin Seconds is the best example I can think of of a punk rock guy transitioning successfully and elegantly to an authentic, credible role as a singer-songwriter qua singer-songwriter. (Not that he's left the punk rock behind, necessarily --...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2016 05:44 PM
I was on KPFA today with my old pal (and "retired punk rock mailman") Last Will and the legendary Kris Welch. I'm used to a very casual, shambolic, deliberately sloppy approach from years of college radio, which is a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2016 04:55 AM
Take a pic and send it to me if you want....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2016 03:08 PM
For ten years I've been collecting photos of people pretending to read my books, a tradition that was started by my old comrade Leah when she sent this pic: Soon everyone was doing it, and I wound up with hundreds...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2016 01:13 PM
This is Chris Appelgren, former owner of Lookout Records, old friend and tireless supporter of me and my stuff. Without his help King Dork Approximately the Album would have struggled much more in its bid for real world existence,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2016 03:49 PM
(You can get one just like it from Sounds Rad.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2016 11:42 PM
It's weird to do the math on stuff like this, but it turns out I've known Last Will for over thirty years. (He was my mailman, used to listen to KALX on his route, realized I was on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2016 01:26 PM
I have noticed that even very smart, quite thoughtful people who have been around the block can have trouble distinguishing fiction from reality when it comes to assessing art. e.g. it can be surprisingly difficult for people to get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2016 06:32 PM
It's a tradition!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2016 12:46 AM
Remember when everyone thought it was the height of evil and a betrayal of "punk" to put UPC codes on records? Down with commercialism (in the context of this product we are trying to sell you)! We were all a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2016 07:12 PM
Thanks to everyone for buying stuff in this last record sale, and for bidding on that Love Is Dead test pressing, which wound up going for $405 -- a record, I'm sure, so to speak. (And cheers, Brian.) I'll probably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2016 03:23 PM
UPDATE, 08.03.16: So the Revenge Is Sweets and Alcatrazes are all gone. I still have a small number of Milk Milk Lemonades, and plenty of the others. (I'm not sure, but I strongly suspect that that's the end of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2016 06:23 PM
Album artwork (front side) here. Seems like some folks are confused by this whole set up, especially by the fact that I keep talking about an MTX album when the image available heretofore has been of a book written...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2016 04:39 PM
One of the things I found in a recent excavation of a box of my old stuff that was in my mom's garage was a photo envelope containing some fuzzy snapshots I took of the Clash at this daytime show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2016 01:49 AM
This is by way of a progress report on King Dork Approximately the Album. The recording for the KDATA is almost completely done. It's coming out great, I think, best stuff we've ever done in many ways. Its exceeding my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2016 03:31 PM
The peace sign is suddenly a lot more interesting once you learn that its designer intended it to depict "an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2016 03:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2016 09:35 PM
One of the many theoretical irons I have in the theoretical fire these days is an idea that dates back to a few years ago when I came across all my old lyrics notebooks that I'd stopped using when I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2016 03:23 PM
From Freddie deBoer: ...Meanwhile, the grubby masses, lacking access to the kind of private liberal arts colleges where one learns these Byzantine codes, now can add political and moral poverty to their economic and social poverty. This is the next...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2016 05:19 PM
Artist Evan Dorkin managed to slip quite a few "shout outs" to unlikely bands into this and other comics. (This was found on Instagram but I remember it well because it made me feel like a big shot at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2016 02:49 PM
From Thoughts on the Sociology of Brexit by Will Davies: What was so clever about the language of the Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment, then promised to eradicate it. The promise...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2016 04:00 PM
Sat. 5/14, 8PM, Uptown, 128 Telegraph, Oakland w/Zack Bateman and the Coal Minds, The Wastedeads, and Toxic Shock Syndrome....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2016 03:14 PM
UPDATE 4/5/16: So this thing is winding down, though I still have the non-crossed-out stuff listed below. I'm going to leave this up here and in the sidebar (at this link) for anyone who wants to check in the future,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2016 03:26 PM
Freddie deBoer on the sublime narcissism of getting offended on other people's behalf. I posted this link on facebook without comment (in that pass-agg way I sometimes have of posting things without comment just to see what people will say,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2016 05:39 PM
So my buddy Chuck Prophet and I are doing a show at Armando's in Martinez on March 20th. If I have ever set foot in Martinez before in my life I am unaware of it, so, well, yeah, mark...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2016 06:41 PM
As a teenager I dreamed of being Pete Townshend and/or Shelley, Ray Davies, Jonathan Richman, et al., but also this guy:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2016 01:29 AM
Wow....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 28, 2015 12:47 PM
It is tempting to imagine that a simple idea in the minds of simple people decades past and thousands of miles away can explain a complex event. The notion that local east European antisemitism killed the Jews of eastern...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2015 07:05 PM
So I guess that vinyl sale was a success, in that I have hardly any of the LPs left. Thanks very much folks. I may well do it again next time I find myself with some time and some product...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2015 11:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2015 04:15 PM
UPDATE: as of now, unless I'm miscounting, all the Love Is Deads are gone, as are most of the other LPs. I Still have some Night Shift, Making Things with Light, and Big Black Bugs, along with the 7"s and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2015 08:32 PM
So the new stuff here is the details for the Oct 10 daytime YA convention and the Casper WY show on 11/20. More to come. Saturday, Oct. 10 Two things happening. First: I will be speaking (and probably doing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2015 06:49 PM
Paul Berman talks Popes and Catholicism: It is sometimes said of Chateaubriand, the author of The Genius of Christianity in 1800, that he was drawn to every aspect of the Catholic Church except its Christianity; and I find this understandable....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2015 03:26 PM
Upcoming things are listed here. (There are more as-yet-unannounceable shows to fill in when the time comes and I'll try to update the list as soon as they become announceable.) First off, as I've mentioned here and there, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2015 06:35 PM
I've often thought, and probably written a time or two, that as so much of my "serious reading" was done many years ago when I was young and stupid, my opinions on these books are unreliable and not to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2015 03:14 PM
So, continuing to rummage through the junk under the bed -- see below --I pulled this out. It's a Les Paul Custom I acquired sometime in the late '80s. According to the Guitar dater serial number lookup thing, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2015 09:13 PM
I almost forgot I had this thing. According to the serial # it's from 1960 Kalamazoo. Seems like at one point it was a sunburst finish? Now like many of my guitars it most resembles a barn door. Pretty...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2015 01:12 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2015 05:32 PM
The rogue poet who managed to smuggle one of his poems into an (apparently) prestigious anthology simply by adopting the name Yi Fen-Chou reminds me of the fascinating case of Rahila Khan. The New Criterion article in which Theodore Dalrymple...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2015 04:29 PM
The Minor Thread guy posted this one today. This was and remains a very popular design and I get many requests to re-issue it. Who knows, it could happen. But if it does, no scientists allowed....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2015 12:21 AM
"Why does contemporary culture so often seem indistinguishable from a Puritan society where everyone is constantly sticking their noses in everyone else’s business?" This is Freddie de Boer's question in an interesting essay in the Observer. Contemporary culture, in this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2015 09:50 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2015 08:24 PM
(Chris Gethard in background!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2015 09:42 PM
There were a lot of things I hated about the '80s: the drum sounds, the identity politics, cultural Marxism, the post-structuralist war on clear writing and thinking, illiberalism from everyone including self-identifying "liberals", the moral panic/witch hunts, political correctness, censorship...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2015 04:39 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2015 01:00 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2015 03:58 PM
My uncle Bill introduced me to the Pentangle in the mid 70s when I was around 10 and it all was still kind of current, but to me at the time 1968 seemed quite ancient, as did the music...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 04:52 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 02:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2015 01:27 PM
That's Yvonne Prinz, whose forthcoming book If You're Lucky I'm in the middle of reading and it's great. If you want King Dork Approximately, I hear they still have some copies left....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2015 06:51 PM
Looking through old lyrics notebooks and noticing how much time and effort I had to have put into trying to be a one man punk rock tin pan alley to nowhere in the 90s, all these closely-written pages of intricate,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2015 11:32 PM
So PEN is going to give a "freedom of expression courage award" to Charlie Hebdo, to be accepted by one of the few CH staff left alive. Six writers, including the novelists Peter Carey and Francine Prose, have withdrawn from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2015 06:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2015 05:54 PM
A few links of the day, on a general "careful what you wish for" theme. Proponents of greater state control in a good cause never seem to consider the quite likely possibility that these instruments of enforcement might well be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2015 06:02 PM
But he doesn't have any money. So, we just give him some money, then have him give it right back to us, wouldn't that work? I don't know, that might make it look kind of implausible that's he's at fault,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2015 06:24 PM
A revolving metal cylinder containing a sacred text, the Tibetan prayer wheel is set in motion by the turn of a human hand. The result is an automated form of prayer, which the votary believes may secure good fortune and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2015 04:23 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2015 08:12 PM
Mostly just random: -- At the end of a run of joyful riffing on the manifold absurdities of Treacherous Love by Beatrice Sparks (of Go Ask Alice fame) the host of this podcast has nice things to say about King...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2015 08:56 PM
Here be my shows update. Some are book things (where I usually play songs) and some are MTX etc. rock and roll shows. See if there's anything you like. Thurday, March 12 Indigo Literacy Night, Frost Elementary, 530 Gettysburg Dr,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2015 04:18 PM
Post-structuralism has destroyed two generations of graduate students, who were forced to mouth its ugly jargon and empty platitudes for their foolish faculty elders. And the end result is that humanities departments everywhere, having abandoned their proper mission of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 09:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 06:46 PM
If you're not aware that the word "liberal" in contemporary American understanding means in many respects something close to the exact opposite of its literal/historical/actual meaning, this debate will be largely incomprehensible. Nevertheless, as even those on the opposing side...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2015 05:50 PM
Well, this is a show update I probably should have posted a bit sooner, but these things have a way of sneaking up on a person. Anyway, come to these. Friday, January 23 Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2015 06:39 PM
Here's a bunch of links I would have posted earlier if the book release, Christmas, New Years, and Second Christmas (Feast of Kings) hadn't got in the way. -- Photographer (and great all around gal) Julie Pavlowski Green took...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2015 12:17 AM
Most correspondence I get these days is of course electronic, but every now and again I'll get an envelope from my publisher containing physical mail sent to their address in New York. These are almost always the result of write-a-letter-to-an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2015 06:15 PM
Well, Christmas, New Years, and Second Christmas (Feast of Kings) always come all in a row and it's weird how that always seems to come as a surprise. Hope you all had a great one. I have quite a bit...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2015 07:07 PM
(Here she is with AK from a ways back.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2015 06:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2014 08:03 PM
So I went to see Judas Priest in San Jose a ways back. I love Judas Priest. The last time I saw them was some time in the early 90s I believe, and before that in the mid 80s....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2014 07:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2014 05:19 PM
Was asked last night whether I'd ever consider writing "adult" books. My inclination, as usual, is to dispute the premise of the question, as I don't see the same unbridgeable chasm between "adult" and "teen" fiction that others seem so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2014 08:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2014 06:32 PM
Beth pointed out this paragraph that closes Dickens's "preface to the first cheap edition" of Nicholas Nickleby: There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer a remark. If Nicholas be not always found to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2014 06:07 PM
-- Check out Nathan Pensky's review of King Dork Approximately over at the AV Club. (It got an A!) -- Alex Scordelis interviewed me for Vice/Noisey and this cool piece was the result. -- I did two songs on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2014 05:26 PM
Hey, so I made the Reason Holiday Book Guide. Or, my book did, rather. ...The narrator, Tom Henderson, is simply one of the greatest voices of adolescent angst ever. I was turned on to King Dork by my then-teenaged son,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2014 04:04 PM
Here are things that happened: -- I feel like I've been listening to KQED's Cy Musiker and Dave Wiegand talk about where to go and what to do for years and years but this is, I'm pretty sure, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2014 08:18 PM
(Come see him play etc at the KDA book release show, 1234 Go! Records, 420 40th St, Oakland, Sunday 12/7, 7PM, free.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2014 03:12 AM
Here are some links to consider when working on your Christmas list. Suggestion: keep it simple. KDA for everybody. -- Hiya Swanhuyser wrote this piece about me and my bloodshot eye for SF Weekly. -- Posh Deluxe of Forever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2014 08:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2014 05:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2014 04:52 PM
Here. She's going to be appearing at the King Dork Approximately event thing in NYC on December 9. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2014 03:49 PM
So just the other day I wound up on the front page of the Tribune and all those other east bay papers courtesy of Jim "the critic" Harrington. Very much appreciate the coverage, so thanks Jim. Several folks have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2014 12:30 PM
Leah single-handedly started the tradition of the King Dork reader photo way back in 2006 by sending this picture. I posted it and people followed suit and began sending in their own portraits of themselves pretending to read the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2014 12:56 AM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2014 08:34 PM
So as you can see -- and you can click on the banner for a larger version of the flier -- the book release show at 1-2-3-4 Go Records on Sunday December 7 is shaping up to be quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2014 11:39 PM
When I re-posted that photo of Mick Jones reading King Dork last week, it became clear that a whole lot of folks had missed it the first time around, so I'm taking this opportunity also to repost what I still...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2014 06:16 PM
New York City Arrests, Prosecutes, Eventually Settles with Legal Knife Owner If NYC law is as described it's insane, but even worse, obviously, is that fact that even these abstruse, irrational criteria seem to be ignored when it comes to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2014 02:46 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2014 06:05 PM
So that new Buzzcocks song is deceptively catchy in a way that many of Pete Shelley's songs have been for me. There are those that just knock you over the head on first listen, of course, but there are also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2014 05:03 AM
Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2014 02:54 PM
That's Mick Jones of the Clash. (Gallery.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 1, 2014 02:06 AM
Came across this article by Sarah Burnes in the Paris Review via Bookshelves of Doom's roundup of recent YA "thinkpieces". Though I obviously agree with the basic thrust of the classic "don't feel bad about reading/writing teen fiction" essay, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2014 06:34 PM
My publisher is Random house, whose logo is a picture of house. Recently they merged with Penguin, whose logo is a picture of a penguin, and the merged company now officially (I think) goes by the name "Penguin Random House"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2014 05:02 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2014 03:49 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2014 08:58 PM
So yes, Interpunk has re-issued the "Sam Hellerman is a Genius" shirts from way back. I get requests for these all the time, so anyone who wants one, now's your chance. Order here. King Dork Approximately shirts coming soon,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2014 07:24 PM
So I'm not sure what I expect to get from this, but I thought it could be worth trying so bear with me while I explain what it is. You know how you (probably) used to devote a great deal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2014 06:28 PM
I did one of those Amazon list things for King Dork way back when, and I did another one for King Dork Approximately just now. It's called the King Dork Approximately Music List and it's basically a list of music...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2014 04:00 PM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2014 01:05 AM
Wonderful, if bittersweet, news: the ninth and final series of Peep Show will air sometime next year. I am going to miss these characters (all of them, including the writers) but of course all of those involved will continue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2014 04:33 AM
Here. Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2014 06:45 PM
Tiffany seems to have had a good time at the Texas Teen Book Festival, and here's her re-cap of the day, which includes this photo: The jam in question is "Cinthya with a Y", which she incidentally gave the best...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2014 06:10 PM
(Gallery.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2014 06:50 PM
So TX Teen Book thing was good. Mostly hung out with the core “team” of music-y YA writers from that previous Anderson’s conference (Len Vlahos, Kevin Emerson, Joelle Charbonneau) but also kind of “bonded” over shared friends and music, past...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2014 06:40 PM
So YA etc. author Kathryn Williams interviewed me about King Dork Approximately for Sparknotes as part of their "Teen Read Week" and the result can be read here. I reveal my most-hated childhood nickname, which of my characters I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2014 08:23 PM
I have managed to time each of my books to coincide with the birth of each of Katrina's three children, more or less. (cf. here, and here.) (And yes, that's the "stunt book" but a photo-op is a photo-op.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 15, 2014 05:50 PM
So, Porchlight was fun. I played "King Dork Approximately" and "Cinthya with a Y" and everyone seemed to have a pretty good time during it, from what I could tell. (It's hard under the bright lights. You can't see...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2014 05:21 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2014 06:37 PM
This is a "show" update, the same list posted below, but I added the details for the Portland Barnes & Noble thing on October 2nd. It's funny that after all the frantic guitar upgrading I did in the past year's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 22, 2014 11:19 PM
A few things coming up. Wednesday, September 24th, 6:00 PM University Book Store, 990 102nd Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004 Saturday, September 27th/28th Anderson's YA Conference, Hotel Arista, 2139 City Gate Lane, Naperville, IL 60563 Monday, September 29th 7:00 PM...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 10:37 PM
Seth Christenfeld of guyslitwire revisits King Dork and has lots of nice things to say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 09:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2014 04:56 PM
The Booklist review of King Dork Approximately can be viewed by subscribers only, but you can read it here, and here: How do you survive high school without succumbing to institutionalized “Normalism”? That is one question asked by self-professed loser...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2014 02:53 PM
It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing. I now mostly associate that public face with danger, with an endless list of things that you can’t...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2014 03:06 AM
So there's a new (ish) Judas Priest album and it's pretty darn good. At least one probable enduring classic ("Halls of Vahalla") and many other strong contenders, a good mix of heavy and melodic with a good dose of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2014 08:45 PM
So apparently we are now arresting, jailing, and breaking up the families of parents for letting their kids do stuff that was totally normal when most of us were growing up, like going to the park, waiting in the car,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2014 05:03 PM
I think this may have been our first show at Gilman. Photo by Ian Harper....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2014 02:08 AM
This kid just thought it would be funny to pose with the book because of the title (I assume) and indicated in a subsequent tweet that he wasn’t too interested in the book and didn’t buy it, but it’s...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2014 06:21 PM
This article/interview is kind of a blast from the past that wound up on my google alert-o-sphere because someone seems to be archiving the Kitchen Sink at the moment. To my surprise, there’s a bit in there that fairly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2014 11:32 PM
I mean, sure. I really don't get this (apparently quite common) fear that someone is going to notice what you're reading and blame you for it. There are lots of genuinely embarrassing things a person can do and be blamed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2014 02:28 AM
So, this be the cover of my new book: Whitney Matheson over at USA Today's Popcandy revealed it today, and there's a Q&A with me at that link as well. Cheers, Whit! You can pre-order the book here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2014 05:07 PM
There is a problem with the way people read novels now, most obvious in Amazon reviews, in which readers consistently confuse whether or not a novel is good with whether or not they “like” the characters. Generally, readers imagine that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2014 09:47 PM
Because I'm a shameless narcissist, I have google alerts on all my "stuff" and this yields some surreally inapt things sometimes. One common one is that I will get alerted to young Christian women who proclaim things like "why yes,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2014 08:24 PM
I took this buzzfeed quiz, via Althouse, (because insomnia) to determine how "privileged" I am, and the result was: 42% "privileged". That's a whole lot less "privileged" than I actually am, I'm sure, if such a thing really is quantifiable....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2014 03:01 PM
Don’t bother trying to make your cultural references contemporary. No matter how hard you try they will be out of date by the time your book is published two years after you submit your manuscript. And five years later when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2014 03:25 AM
Here. (Pre-order it!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2014 03:45 PM
J.D. Salinger... F. Portman... goal!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2014 03:43 AM
Brendan Halpin on the "likeability trap" and YA fiction. This apparently increasing phenomenon -- character "likeability" as the central, most important criterion for assessing literary merit -- is one of my least favorite things about the democratization of criticism enabled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2014 05:13 PM
I've been told that they'll never do this with guitars, but... ...apparently all it takes is an agency's "order" to ban the import of all ivory regardless of age or context, such that an antique upright piano is now stuck...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2014 03:17 PM
Just got a few galleys of King Dork Approximately in the mail. (That's not what the actual cover is going to be, so it says "cover to come!" on it.) Call me old fashioned, but a book you can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2014 10:05 PM
When I was a kid just getting started on my future career as a pretend rock star, one of the first things I came up with was an arrangement of the Beatles' "Yesterday" with the lyrics of the Spiderman theme...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2014 04:54 PM
Paul and George had a quota of anecdotes from these early days of a strengthening friendship, like the time they heard how someone had a copy of the Coasters' "Searchin'" and made a long bus journey to Bootle or Kirkby...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2014 02:39 AM
So my system has been as slow-moving as John Banville's The Sea, with continual beach balls and freeze-ups and inexplicable delays where what I type gets displayed what seems like hours after I hit the keys. Checking the logs I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2014 08:11 PM
As you may know, I've been posting pictures showing the progress of the custom acoustic guitar that Jason Ingrodi has been building for me over the past few months. This wasn't something I'd ever expected to do, especially since...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2014 10:19 PM
I have this fanciful notion that I am in some kind of club with songwriters who have written songs with the same titles as mine. (Wrote a bit about this here. There are now twenty-one Another Yesterdays, not just eight,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2014 07:49 PM
So the release date (Sept. 9) is quite a ways away but apparently they distributed some bound typescript manuscripts of King Dork Approximately at the ALA thing, resulting in the first review posted on Goodreads. Fortunately, it says it "definitely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2014 06:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2014 04:27 PM
Ah, finally figured out how to turn off the thing in Pages where it changes "--" to an m-dash (or something) and miniaturizes "..." It's "Substitutions" in the edit menu. I wrote a whole book being helplessly incensed by that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2014 07:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2014 04:33 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2014 04:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2014 03:04 PM
Parts 2 and 3 here. (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2014 09:50 PM
Boujemaa Razgui, a flute virtuoso who lives in New York and works with many US ensembles, was returning to base over the holiday when Customs officials at Kennedy Airport asked to see his instruments. Bourjemaa carries a variety of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2013 10:54 PM
Andromeda’s father suspected the government of spying on American citizens by implanting surveillance devices in electronic products. All the manufacturers and the governments and the corporations that control them were in on it. He had several boxes of extracted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 07:13 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2013 01:00 AM
Megan McArdle explains why she tries not to write bad reviews these days. I can see both points of view in the “snark vs. smarm” argument, but she’s right that mean-spirited reviews, fun as they may be to write, don’t...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2013 07:13 PM
I noted this case a ways back (here and here) and now the decision is in, the court reaching, as far as I can tell, the conclusion that always seemed the obvious one to me: Adultery, including adulterous cohabitation, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2013 06:56 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2013 04:08 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2013 04:10 PM
"wombmyn". Discuss. Except you can't here because the comments are broken. So, here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2013 03:58 PM
The story of the guy who claims police threatened to shoot his dog if he didn’t allow them to search his house without a warrant has been making the rounds, and Volokh has a post on it today. So, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2013 08:59 PM
Police shoot at, and miss, unarmed man, who is then charged with "assaulting" the bystanders hit by their stray bullets....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2013 11:36 PM
The New Statesman comes out against “Movember,” one of those things where people grow mustaches to raise awareness of something or other. Turns out it’s racist....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2013 02:47 PM
It's kinky, man. Kinky....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2013 04:33 PM
I went over to his blog to check on what he had to say about Lou Reed and was shocked to learn that Norm Geras has passed away. It is a great loss for the "blogosphere" and certainly a great...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2013 12:57 PM
The Guardian's reading group gives Edgar Allen Poe the goodreads treatment. A generous one star, and that's only because it's amazing he managed to get this stuff published at all....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 26, 2013 07:05 PM
I don't know if other people do it this way, but for me the final few passes of revision always involve reading the entire manuscript aloud. Losing my voice here......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2013 07:18 PM
I made the sensible pledge to myself to refrain from acquiring Civ V till I had finished and turned in my book, for obvious reasons. But to commemorate finishing the book, and as a reward to myself, I got the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2013 03:39 PM
The feeling of the morning after the night before is not a sensation endured by the dissolute only: every morning, for every human being, is in some sort a morning after the night before: the dissolute only experience it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2013 06:43 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2013 11:28 PM
Well, I'm feeling a little guilty that I forgot my cat's birthday, but I had a show last night and show business is my life. I'll make it up to you G. K. Chesterton, somehow. How about some chicken McNuggets?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2013 04:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2013 04:31 AM
Came across this wearisome recapitulation of the doctrinaire belittlement of Lovecraft as a "bad writer," a racist, etc. via Andrew Sullivan's blog. Seeking to assess the "badness" of writing as a discrete quality unrelated to the ideas expressed or whatever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2013 06:30 PM
I'm sure many of you have noticed that the "tabs" (meaning chords, pretty much) that appear on the internet tend to be wildly inaccurate. So much is this the case that it strains credibility to imagine anyone with any familiarity...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2013 06:06 PM
Advice on doing revisions, among a great many other how-to-get-published tips from Delilah S. Dawson: Don’t read it like it’s your precious perfect baby darling. Read it like it’s your worst enemy’s magnum opus and your job is to expose...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2013 04:37 PM
If someone publishes a book, some of the money from sales of the book should be paid to the author, right? Not so fast, say the commenters on this Atlantic article: paying authors has really gotten out of hand. Example:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2013 08:18 PM
So, as I've mentioned before, I'm always quite nervous when I see someone reading one of my books in public. I feel like I really shouldn't be there, or, alternately, like I really should say a few solemn inspiring words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2013 03:56 PM
Remember when the DEA left that college kid to die in a locked room for five days? A ways back I was wondering what ever happened to him and his case, and the consensus of facebook comments was that there...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2013 02:36 AM
Never noticed this before. But it's still missing links to the music, as outlined here. They need to "globalize" the product content, or at least extend it beyond books, for this to be truly useful....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2013 05:32 PM
I think this was probably King Dork's finest hour:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 06:48 PM
Getting a small start on re-organizing the Dr. Frank internet in advance of the new book, and I came across this guy: The strangest thing about this is that he's obviously been around for quite some time, yet not one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2013 05:00 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2013 06:02 PM
Wendy snapped this photo of what I assume is a band's T shirt at the Warped tour. Man overboard!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2013 06:10 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2013 01:55 PM
Because of a question about where to buy MTX / Dr. Frank stuff on line, I took a look at the iTunes store's MTX page and found the sentence that is the title of this post in the band bio....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2013 10:26 PM
Nerd Appeal puts King Dork on a list with David Sedaris, Paul Feig, and Chuck Klosterman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2013 01:28 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2013 01:23 AM
Joyce Carol Oates wrote this in form of seven reverse order tweets today and it was easier to read copied and pasted: The issue of "creativity" could be translated into plainer terms: hours spent in work. It requires many hours...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 03:20 PM
From Julian Sanchez: We might imagine a system of compulsory cameras installed in homes, activated only by warrant, being used with scrupulous respect for the law over many years. The problem is that such an architecture of surveillance, once established,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2013 12:18 PM
Sir Crichton Davey's study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2013 02:24 PM
Drunk-posted this little tale on the face thing last night, and the comments wound up being funny enough that I'm posting it here for the edification of anyone who still reads stuff on this blog. So, some time ago when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2013 03:44 PM
Pizza demo lady at Costco freaks out over dwindling pizza supply; employees call cops; police arrive and shoot her dead. Now, it does sound as though this woman's behavior was strange and evidently it was disturbing enough to spur fellow...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2013 04:02 PM
A collection of great quotations on writing drawn from Raymond Chandler's letters, including: I am having a hard time with the book. Have enough paper written to make it complete, but must do all over again. I just didn’t know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2013 03:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2013 08:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2013 02:06 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2013 02:55 AM
I don't find the mild hypocrisy outlined in this A. Barton Hinkle article on "cognitive dissonance" and gun control to be all that remarkable, or at all surprising. And I'm not even sure it qualifies as hypocrisy -- there's nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2013 09:24 PM
The comments have been broken on this blog for some time now, and I find it really inhibits my posting. Posting mainly happens when I have some lengthy comment to make on something, or when I want to post something...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2013 03:01 PM
Glenn Greenwald analyzes this fascinatingly constructed NYT article on the alleged process by which Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted and killed by a drone strike in September, 2011, and concludes that the article is little more than a narrowly tailored news-ified...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2013 09:24 PM
This Florida bill requiring a search warrant for police use of surveillance drones has a gaping hole in it, to wit, an exception for "imminent danger to a life or serious danger to a property." In a world where words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 09:48 PM
Back on the face thing, I had this comment to the comments: I have an inchoate thought that I'm not sure I'll express well enough. There are all sorts of valid criticisms of various positions and views of Rand Paul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 05:04 PM
"I admire libertarians, but I think Rand Paul's filibuster in many ways is very much what libertarians do, they make these very symbolic gestures, standing for some extreme position." -- John Yoo...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 12:45 AM
I said this about it on the twitface: Everyone in my demographic (i.e. most people on here, I imagine) is culture-bound to despise and deride Rand Paul as a matter of identity, but I found yesterday inspiring, and, regardless of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2013 12:41 AM
Ordinary Injustice results when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them. There are times when an alarming miscarriage of justice does come to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 04:26 PM
Drawn from life much more literally than I'd realized: In the late 1920s, a peculiar confluence of fashion and fascism came together in England. The Men's Dress Reform Party, an outgrowth of the eugenics movement, agitated for men to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 02:30 AM
I had no idea it ended like this: After soaring, Sherman’s career un-soared, starting down hill in 1965. But those first two or three years, Allan Sherman later got summed up by Joe Smith as “he was The Moment. Even...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2013 01:55 AM
Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2013 07:49 PM
Regarding those questions about what happens when a police officer is found to have lied on a police report, and what it would take for anything at all to happen, here's an (as far as I can see) rare instance...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2013 11:32 PM
Another Balko "raid of the day": Known around the neighborhood as "Pops," 80-year-old Isaac Singletary moved into his high-crime Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood in 1987 to care for and protect his sister and mother, both of whom were sick at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2013 08:06 PM
Movie theater employees call police for help in persuading a young man with Down Syndrome to vacate his seat after the movie is over; police arrive, kill the guy. The officers have "exercised their rights under the Law Enforcement Officers'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2013 02:36 PM
So as I face-twitted last night, I've been hearing Al Gore's quaaluded H R Pufnstuf "sad voice" on the various media over the past week. One phrase he always uses when discussing the kinda controversial Al Jazeera / Current TV...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2013 04:06 PM
These sentences occur in a post about the strange origin of that strange trillion dollar platinum coin idea, and I'm highlighting them because the meaning of the analogy eludes me. A commenter describes them as "the greatest sentence I've read...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2013 10:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2012 06:25 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 21, 2012 06:04 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2012 06:09 PM
I realized I never got around to including a side-panel link to the Interpunk re-creation of the MTX "…and the women who love them" T-shirt, so I did it and it's there now. (When it says "Women" at the link...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 05:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 03:44 PM
I don't know how many people have noticed that I've been a bit missing in action and even more reclusive than usual until pretty recently. It's a long story, really, and never mind about that. But early this year I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2012 01:32 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2012 05:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2012 07:36 PM
I had been planning to write some kind of post-mortem of the Euro Art Tour that I just returned from, and I may yet do one, but I don't really have it in me at the moment. In lieu of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2012 06:09 PM
I'm heading out the door for the trek to Europe -- first stop, Rotterdam, tour dates here -- and I thought I'd mention quickly while I'm still on the American wifi that the digital verison of the MTX cover...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2012 11:27 PM
Jim Testa posted this video on facebook with the following tale: Back in 1978, Robert Christgau wrote a piece in the Voice saying that punk rockers who hated disco were inherently homophobic. I disagreed. We didn't like disco because...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2012 04:22 PM
... preferably in that order. Some form of that is evidently going to be the cover of the Kepi / Dr. Frank split 7" that's coming out imminently on Surfin'Ki Records out of Pisa, Italy. We recorded it at Denny...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2012 08:24 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2012 05:15 AM
So, I'm playing at Gilman this Saturday (August 11) with -- like it says - Cobra Skulls, Dear Landlord, the Murderburgers, Hard Girls and Dead Ringers. Come on by and such....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2012 08:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2012 06:28 PM
"I can tell you one thing about her. She is over-sexed." "Is that just feminine intuition?" "No. I am not very feminine and I have no intuition. But I have never known anyone -- man or woman -- with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2012 05:21 AM
Thinking about Agatha Christie because of this post, I said to myself: "self, it's been quite some time since you've read one of those, hasn't it?" "Yes," I replied. "It certainly has been." "How long do you reckon?" There was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2012 06:44 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2012 06:42 PM
I hadn't known till I read this post from Drew Mackie that the premise of the twist-denouement of Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side was appropriated more or less exactly from an incident in the real life...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2012 01:10 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2012 10:11 PM
I found this book on the street a couple of days before a flight to Baltimore and I took that as a message from the universe that I should take it along and read it on the plane rather than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2012 09:09 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2012 07:15 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2012 11:22 PM
Eggnog from the German band the Yoohoos sends along this version of "I Wanna Ramone You" done before they'd heard how mine went: p.s. In case it's not obvious, you press the black triangle to play the song. I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2012 04:22 PM
If I'm reading it right, this thoroughly, obviously innocent woman spent 53 days in jail because the cop who responded to her stolen truck report didn't listen carefully enough to the last name of a subsequent suspect wanted for assault...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2012 01:23 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2012 10:20 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2012 02:37 PM
When I was in middle school this kid whose name I no longer remember said he'd let me be in his band if I wrote lyrics to a song he had called "Rockin' Halls" that was supposed to be about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2012 12:04 AM
Something to do with the Masons?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2012 04:44 PM
NY man charged with assault for injuring police officers' fists with his face. No, really. (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2012 09:46 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2012 06:10 PM
The Square of Sevens: an Authoritative System of Cartomancy by E. Irenaeus Stevenson, New York, 1897....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2012 05:50 PM
Remember this kid? NYPD officers who thought he had drugs saw him enter his apartment building and kicked down the doors, following him into the bathroom where he was summarily killed. The cop who shot him (now charged with manslaughter)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2012 04:21 AM
SPIN asked me to submit a list of twenty, and I did, but then they very generously decided to sneak one of mine on there, so one of the original twenty had to go. (Sorry, Sewer Trout.) Of course, "Superwoman"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2012 04:43 PM
Scott Horton on the Drug Enforcement Agency's finest hour: The agency and its strategies, which together comprise America’s second effort at prohibition, may be the most completely failed ideas that the Seventies brought to America. Yet the American political sector...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2012 07:37 PM
This guy was attacked (Tased and beaten up) by Portland police who mistook him for a graffitist as he walked home from a night of bowling. Four years later, he wins $250,000 in damages in a federal suit. The cops...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2012 06:49 PM
It's usually hyperbole when something is tagged "beyond parody," but this comes mighty close. Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times explains why George W. Bush's abuses of power were so appalling, whereas President Obama's abuses of power are just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2012 06:50 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2012 09:35 PM
I've got no opinion on "birth rape," apparently a term of art for invasive medical procedures conducted during childbirth. But this sentence, flagged by Ann Althouse, is a doozy: Yeah, it’s wrong to make a woman feel emasculated on what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2012 12:11 AM
A Bogota NY woman calls emergency services, hoping for an ambulance to take her emotionally disturbed son to the hospital. Police arrive on the scene first, hop out of the car, tackle the "patient," hold him down, and begin beating...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2012 04:59 PM
Marine biologist faces twenty years in federal prison for allegedly lying to federal prosecutors investigating the incident, in which the captain and a crew-member of a whale-watching excursion whistled at a humpback whale to encourage it to stick around their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2012 04:01 PM
Interpunk has recreated the old "...women who love them" shirt that we used to sell on our mid-90s tours. It was our biggest selling design, I believe, for many years, but it's been a long time since it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2012 08:15 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 07:09 PM
Heh. That's from a punknews.org item. By the way, that list isn't exactly set in stone and you can still discuss or contribute or whatever if you feel like it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 06:42 PM
A few days ago I asked for suggestions for a theoretical "best of" MTX collection, mostly because I've been working on getting the back catalog back together for digital re-release and it seems like a "greatest hits" type option would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2012 03:55 PM
That's Hank Green, John's brother. added: "ARGH. NO MAN CAN CALL A WOMAN HIS OWN!!!" The youtube comments include some, er, critiques. It's often interesting what happens when one of my songs is out "in the wild" like that....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2012 02:01 PM
68-year-old man with heart condition triggers medical alert. System operator calls an ambulance. Police arrive on the scene, break down the door, and shoot him dead. A "warranted use of deadly force," according to the public safety commissioner. Yes, after...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2012 01:46 PM
is that if you ever do have the occasion to raise your voice or assert yourself even a little bit about anything, people will look at you like you just kicked a puppy across the room....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2012 03:42 AM
There's this saying that you used to hear people say a lot: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's attributed to various people who seem like they might have said something like that, David Byrne, Frank Zappa, Elvis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2012 04:03 PM
The Fourth Amendment proves to be no barrier to this Collinsville, Illinois cop's desire to harass a couple of rotund, middle-aged Trekkies from Ohio. It's a long video, but amusingly-edited and -narrated enough to reward sticking through the whole thing:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2012 11:49 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2012 01:55 AM
They just are. And I don't think that because I hate Sarah Palin (I don't -- though I never really wanted her to be the president.) On the other hand, Bill Maher gets a laugh from his Palin jokes, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2012 03:32 PM
Okay so, this is funny: an Ottowa woman claims that convenient parking is a "human right" (and that her having three kids qualifies her as having "special needs" as well.) Moreover, the woman in question is a former investigator for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2012 06:28 PM
I've turned the comments back on, just to see if I can bear what spam may come after the little break. If it gets bad again all of sudden, I'll have no problem turning them off again. Honestly, it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2012 12:39 AM
Will Wilkinson's car radio quite obviously plays a different sort of country music than my record player does. Granted, contemporary country music overall is a devolved, shallow, shadow of its former self, like all contemporary music -- and culture in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2012 08:08 PM
My buddy Chuck Prophet has a new album and it's getting some attention (and it's great -- buy one!) It's always nice when the good guys win, since it happens so rarely. He's getting a bit of press in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2012 07:39 PM
Jodi of I Will Dare, guesting at Book Riot, posts about how Andromeda Klein's love of books inspired a general, felicitous de-hoarding and purge of unwanted titles and how in the process (if I'm reading it right) the book managed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2012 07:07 PM
Michael Kinsley talks sense on the Rush Limbaugh slut boycott: any apology induced in these circumstances is almost by definition insincere. You can’t demand a public recantation and then expect sincerity along with the humble pie. If they wanted a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2012 04:05 PM
Overwhelmed by spam again, so I'm turning off the comments for awhile to let it die down a bit. Email me or facebook me if you've got anything to say....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2012 04:15 AM
Maria Popova celebrates Dr. Seuss's nude "adult" book. It's long out of print but not too hard to find. Wishing a dead person a "happy birthday" is a pretty strange thing to do, and doing so as a way...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2012 02:58 PM
Another 911 disaster story via Balko. Mentally ill man calls 911 yelling incoherent nonsense. Police arrive on the scene, find him in his attic room holding an axe, Tase him and shoot him, wounding him in the leg, and proceed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2012 06:06 PM
Huffington Post climate-heads stand by their man in the face of what must be some pretty severe cognitive dissonance....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2012 03:44 PM
Even genuine authorities hit a wall when they try to correct errors on wikipedia: I removed the line about there being "no evidence" and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2012 06:12 PM
A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man — the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2012 05:44 PM
All the officers in this video, including the one who kicked the man in diabetic shock in the face six times while yelling "stop resisting motherfucker" are still on the streets looking for more people to beat up: ADDED: Digby...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2012 03:36 PM
Kol Egil's son said, "Let me get at Kolskegg," and turning to Kolskegg he said, "This I have often said, that we two would be just about an even match in fight." "That we can soon prove," says Kolskegg....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2012 02:57 AM
Matt Riggle of the band 41 Gorgeous Blocks writes about his mostly-imagined view of Lookout Records based on tiny bits of data gleaned from record jackets and the like: A door tagged with the iconic “eyeballs” logo opens to reveal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2012 05:11 PM
A week ago I got a message from a guy asking if I wanted to come to London to play at a punk rock festival allegedly being put on in Camden Town the following week. I'll help you with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2012 10:53 PM
Westland, Michigan man faces fine and three months in jail for "malicious use of communications device misuse of 911," which is, evidently, the technical legal term for calling 911 more than once when police don't show up. This will be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2012 04:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2011 07:58 PM
Jeffen over at the Music Ruined My Life blog has been strolling through the Forgotten Rebels' discography. (Start here and scroll down.) I pretty much stopped paying attention to them after This Ain't Hollywood and hadn't realized they'd had so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 8, 2011 05:35 PM
The Duckhead Buddha came into existence in the Fall of 1983 in the following way: walking down the street, looking at my feet as usual so as to avoid eye contact with anyone who might pop up, I happened to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2011 04:00 AM
Tom Clougherty on "brutalist" architecture: The trouble with so much architecture from the post-war period is that the state was the client – architects designed housing projects with little or no concern for the people who would actually live in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2011 11:09 PM
An English teacher reviews King Dork: I don’t remember laughing at all. Maybe I was disappointed by the sensual scenes, which I’m sure our librarian has not yet read – otherwise it would probably be banned....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2011 12:38 AM
There's less here than meets the eye, of course: they're simply removing what they see as a less important term from the "concise" edition of the OED, not attempting to erase it completely, and using the fact that they're doing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2011 05:28 PM
From the soundtrack album for this amazing movie....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2011 05:44 PM
Interview with yours truly here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2011 04:32 AM
So that's how you do it......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2011 06:23 PM
Wind power kills endangered birds, hydro kills fish, solar kills the desert, and oil, coal, and nuclear evidently kill everything. (Also, if we don't shape up right now, we're on course to be destroyed by environmentalist extra-terrestrials.) It's tough being...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2011 10:06 PM
Don't get cancer and try to help pay your medical bills with yard sales....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2011 06:56 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2011 04:58 PM
Here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2011 08:36 PM
In a recent discussion of Milk Milk Lemonade on facebook (mostly here, but also here, and here, if you're interested) it came out that the album wasn't on iTunes for some reason. Not sure why it got kicked out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 04:30 PM
Anyone who has spent any time with me will, no doubt, have heard me cry out for an air conditioned suit from time to time. Japan to the rescue. I'm totally getting one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2011 12:17 AM
If you've ever even glanced at Reason.com, and noted the arguably obsessive, nearly wall-to-wall, criticism of police and the criminal injustice system, this spiel by Lawrence O'Donnell will probably make you snort and roll your eyes a bit. The through-the-looking-glass...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2011 10:38 PM
I'm a broken, Balko-phonic record today, I know, but it's just one of those days. I remember several instances, back when I was a kid, of children and elderly people being struck by cars when walking across treacherous intersections. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2011 07:47 PM
I only meant to listen to (and exhibit) the first song, "Breakfast," but there are a few others from Lindisfarne frontman Alan Hull's mindblowing first solo album in that clip. That song just knocks me out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2011 12:18 AM
Prosecutorial malfeasance, apparently, in the Casey Anthony case. Presumably then, as Althouse says, if there had been a guilty verdict, she'd be getting a new trial now. But what about the prosecutors, who broke the law by knowingly suppressing evidence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2011 06:24 PM
So, you know that Oak Park, MI lady who faced three months in prison for growing vegetables in her front yard? A judge has dismissed those charges. But now she faces three months in prison for unlicensed dogs (now licensed,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2011 07:20 PM
"And if he wants to call them his wives, the state of Utah should say, 'Knock yourself out, dude.' That, or nothing." Steve Chapman weighs in on that bizarro polygamy prosecution and lawsuit I noted here. I have to say,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2011 10:52 PM
Finally got around to picking up this recent biography of Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker, and so far it's a corker, meticulously researched, well-written, not to mention beautifully designed and bound. I'm learning some stuff, too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2011 04:37 AM
A guy tries to cash a check at his own bank. Bank incorrectly suspects forgery and calls the police. Guy spends five days in jail, loses his job, has his car (still parked at the bank while he's in jail)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2011 10:14 PM
It is quite disturbing to see all those great big ads for MacKeeper on all my favorite blogs. I know the individual bloggers don't have much to do with it, per se: they just subscribe to a service, like intermarkets.net...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2011 07:26 PM
One day I may type out the whole, strange, extremely unlikely story of how my little band wound up jamming, sort of, with Johnny Thunders in a New York cafe on one weird night in 1989. Till then, though, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2011 05:43 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2011 07:04 PM
I'd been asked to do it quite some time ago and didn't really think too much about it till I showed up an hour before the show, not knowing at all what I was walking into and figuring I'd...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2011 07:08 PM
My BMI statement for this quarter reported broadcast/publishing royalties in a category I'd never seen before: AIRCRAFT. Evidently (or not, because it certainly could be a reporting glitch) the song "She's Not a Flower" from Yesterday Rules was "performed" or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2011 09:34 PM
I know they're just promoting their book the best they can, but this breezy "how to write YA" article in Slate still irritates. The tone and attitude reminds me of many conversations I've had with "literary" writers, in which they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2011 07:56 PM
I was listening this today and it reminded me of this great tune: It appears the record that's from (the Dig that Crazy Grave EP from Irish psych-garage rock combo The Golden Horde) is no longer available anywhere for love...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2011 10:35 PM
Interpunk is doing a couple of MTX shirts. It has been quite a while since any shirts have been available commercially, so this is, by any conceivable measure, a big, big deal. We tried making Love is Dead shirts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2011 08:49 PM
Wildman Fischer, dead at 66....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2011 06:17 PM
Speaking of "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" (as I just was, down there) there were few songs that had as much purchase on my attention in those days as that one did. I mean, it really "spoke to me," somehow, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2011 11:23 PM
When I turned 13 in September, 1977, my musical tastes and interests were in the process of being shaped by an assortment of DJs on college radio stations and specialty shows on commercial rock stations. The college stations tended to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2011 08:51 AM
This guy at the record store I used to hang out at when I was in high school once gave me a cut-out copy of Bill Wyman's Monkey Grip solo album, saying: "here take it, get it out of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2011 02:49 AM
More from Matt Welch on that Dept. of Education SWAT raid. As he points out, the problem with using these violent tactics to serve routine warrants isn't just the needless physical, psychological, property, and puppy damage that can result...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2011 06:38 PM
Reading that Meghan Cox Gurdon Wall Street Journal essay, I kept thinking of this song:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 10:52 PM
So there's a recent Wall Street Journal piece on the state of YA lit making the rounds. As usual, I noticed the complaints on twitter and facebook and blogs without being much moved seek out the article that sparked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2011 08:44 PM
I know from experience that this sound can clear a room pretty quickly, so brace yourself before pressing play. I find it does mysterious, pleasantly uncomfortable things to my brain. That recording of one of the most famous songs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2011 11:54 PM
[Photo deleted, viewable here.] I don't know who took this photo way back when, but whoever it was managed to capture something or other....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 2, 2011 11:29 PM
Orin Kerr explains how proposed changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could well make checking facebook at work a felony punishable by up to three years in prison for each instance. (It's tricky even as it stands, without...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2011 08:14 PM
This case is really something else. A guy is questioned, arrested, and held by cops for legally carrying a legal firearm, a law of which the police are ignorant; a harsh confrontation develops in which the police become hysterical and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 19, 2011 05:11 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2011 10:40 PM
This seems about right to me: The CD, the cassette, the vinyl LP, are all more or less devalued below the level of the T-shirts and other dry goods that orbit the burnt-out sun of the music industry. Their relative...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2011 04:08 PM
Clearing out and sorting through things and what not, I found these notebooks, squirreled away and forgotten in various places: They're the songwriting/lyrics books that I used to carry around, spanning, I'd guess, the early 90s through the early 2000s....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2011 03:26 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2011 04:57 PM
They're putting William Burroughs's The Soft Machine on trial in Turkey. It isn't clear to me what penalties the book will face if convicted, but the article reads as though they are gearing up for a criminal trial with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2011 05:23 PM
According to this, the home for sale in this Providence real estate listing is the Shunned House featured in HP Lovecraft's famous story of that name. (via Metafilter.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2011 07:39 AM
A: I wrote one novel in which there was a 19 year old girl named Kathy whose boyfriend was named Jack who appeared to have a relation with the criminal underground who turns out to have a relation with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2011 11:37 PM
That's from Gary Johnson's website blurb about drug policy. Read the rest: it is the most sensible, sane thing I've ever read from any politician on the subject, and I would vote for it in a heartbeat. Not that I'll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2011 06:36 PM
If you spent any time at all in the Pacific Northwest in the eighties, you probably do. I remember hearing all sorts of outlandish stories about the Rajneeshees, and most of them turned out to be true. The picture...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2011 06:01 PM
Found here. UPDATE: Here's Radley Balko's post on this. I've been asking myself why I have such a strong reaction to this video and story, when, compared to so many other cases of police abuse of authority, it's relatively...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 06:35 PM
I have seen this attributed to Hemingway, Roald Dahl, William Goldman, and maybe even a few others, but whoever said it, it's some of the most useful advice anyone ever gave me: The best way is always to stop when...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2011 05:03 PM
As you might imagine, I have never knowingly read a "romance novel," per se, though I would guess some books I have read could well fall into some genre-straddling peripheral category. I mean, like, actual gothic romances, The Monk, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2011 05:56 PM
Unlike Ron Rosenbaum, I'm quite fond of Ulysses, but I agree with a lot of what he says in the process of trying to trash it in this piece. As an ironic commentary on the Odyssey -- something Rosenbaum doesn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2011 12:50 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2011 06:13 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2011 12:03 AM
Brendan Halpin has some thoughts on self-censorship in YA. He's right that a variety of forces, from within and from without, can combine to cause a fairly warped picture of actual teen life in a quite a lot of teen...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2011 05:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2011 04:06 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2011 09:05 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2011 11:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2011 09:49 PM
Here's something you don't see everyday: a celebration of "roguelikes." Rogue itself was before my time, but but it's not an exaggeration to say that much of my life in the 80s and 90s -- and even, occasionally, more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2011 03:46 AM
…or they'll surveil you, entrap you, send a SWAT team to execute you a warrant, murder you, lie about it, admit no wrongdoing, harass and intimidate your grieving family, and tie the matter up in court for five years before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2011 07:25 PM
Wierus is offering an early printing of the Dragon Rouge/Grand Grimoire to anyone with a spare 3,000 euros lying around....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2011 07:39 PM
However one might characterize the ethos embodied in contemporary American right wing populist rhetoric, "eliminationist," coined by Daniel Goldhagen in his Hitler's Willing Executioners to describe the ideological underpinnings of the popular will to exterminate European Jews, is surely the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2011 11:22 PM
Pennsylvania Congressman plans to introduce bill banning visual depictions of crosshairs and bullseyes....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 11:59 PM
Of course we should mourn the people senselessly murdered yesterday, government employees and otherwise: U.S. District Judge John Roll, Dorthy Murray, Dorwin Stoddard, nine-year-old Christina Greene, Phyllis Scheck, and Gabe Zimmerman. That said, I long for the day that our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2011 06:47 PM
I am as against bowdlerizing Huckleberry Finn as anyone could be, but all the hullabaloo over this particular edition is bizarre: publishers have been silently doing precisely this in school and textbook editions of that book, and many others, for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2011 08:18 AM
I found this empty cigarette pack box on the pavement outside the ESL school nearby where I used to work in Berkeley, long long ago. The slogan reads: "THE TASTE OF MY CIGARETTES IS VERY SMOOTH, SOFT, AND SENSUAL,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2011 09:16 PM
Stephen Fry on Douglas Adams's writing procedure: Douglas's writing routine was painful in the extreme. Sue Freestone, his publisher at Heinemann, would come round and beg, often almost with tears welling in her eyes, for pages from his printer. Douglas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 30, 2010 05:54 PM
Unlike that guy, but also admittedly kind of like that guy, I have google alerts on me and my stuff so I can keep track of what Mr. and Mrs. Internet are saying about me. Usually they work as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2010 05:24 PM
Further to this, Archie comics seems to be getting ever more mashup-y and "meta," like everything else these days. This looks a bit like a Chick Tract meld to me: (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2010 04:52 PM
Last week I recorded a vocal track in Oakland, CA for a session happening in Madison, WI, with all the tracks uploaded and downloaded through a series of tubes. So yes, people can make rock and roll and not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2010 04:47 PM
That's number three on Captain Beefheart's Ten Commandments for Guitarists, via Don in the comments to ....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2010 09:29 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2010 09:38 PM
My old bandmate Jon von reached Bob Feldman of the Strangeloves by phone in an attempt to get permission to release a French version of the song "Cara-lin," and lived to tell the tale. Spoiler alert: he didn't get it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2010 06:14 PM
The Andromeda Klein paperback releases officially tomorrow (Tuesday, December 14.) I've been getting quite a few requests for signed books and records and such lately, probably owing to it being the Toys 'r' Us time of year, so I figured...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2010 12:06 AM
ADDED: Beppe forwarded me this guy: You might want to brace yourself, or back the volume down a bit, at around the three minute mark, as it gets a little intense at that point. And if you found that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2010 04:36 PM
Further to my comment about how the thrill of perceived sub-cultural "signaling" tends to endure beyond all rationality (on the Necronomicon/wikileaks "connection" post) here's a case in point. Lovecraftian Playing cards: Every time something like this pops up on boingboing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2010 11:39 PM
What's a quotation from the Simonomicon doing in the wiki-leaks documents? Beats the Ir-Kalla out of me! It's used as an epigraph here, and explained, sort of, in this file on "One Man's Search for a Cryptographic Mythology": I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2010 01:52 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2010 05:42 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2010 09:48 PM
Well, as a connoisseur of the black arts, I sure did: it's "Pickman's Model" on Rod Serling's Night Gallery, all three seasons of which are on hulu. And here's "Cool Air," as well, adapted by Serling himself. Night Gallery...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2010 05:30 PM
Sometimes it seems as though the Internet is always listening, and contrives to place documents before you to prove you wrong from time to time, just to show you that it can. To wit: just last week I was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2010 05:18 PM
(via Casey.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2010 11:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2010 06:54 PM
It's hard to see, but the outside book is Techniques in the Organic Laboratory....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2010 05:30 PM
The Andromeda Klein paperback comes out next month, and I just got one in the mail: They changed the front cover, obviously, but they did include the annotated charts that were printed on the inside of the original jacket as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2010 08:40 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2010 11:56 PM
Good grief: Honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 08:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 08:08 PM
More SWAT team over-reach, via Radley Balko. I can't tell for sure from this whether or not private poker games are ever okay in SC (though it seems unwise to risk it) but it does appear that playing any type...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 06:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2010 01:35 AM
For some reason, quite a few attendees at my recent appearance at the Berkeley, IL public library asked me to sign books that had nothing to do with me other than the fact that I was being asked to sign...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 4, 2010 08:56 PM
That's crime fiction author Reed Farrel Coleman, whom I met while he was in San Francisco at Bouchercon (essentially a Comic-Con for mystery fans.) One drink led to another, resulting, as so often, in a pretending-to-read photo. I had...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 28, 2010 09:28 PM
Well, they did, up to around just now, but they've finally stopped. (They is Sony.) On tour in pre-iPod days, I used to travel with a trash bag of tapes, though in practice I rarely ended up removing the default...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2010 04:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2010 08:12 PM
Elif Batumen on the creative writing workshop: Because writing is suspected to be narcissistic and wasteful, it must be ‘disciplined’ by the programme … The workshop’s most famous mantras – ‘Murder your darlings,’ ‘Omit needless words,’ ‘Show, don’t tell’ –...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2010 10:51 PM
An unpublished manuscript, begun by Dr. Seuss and completed by an assistant, is up for auction. In a way the accompanying letter, criticizing the story, assessing the "brat book" market, and blaming his lagging correspondence on galufforschmords in his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 09:53 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2010 07:53 PM
"I felt like I made the wrong choice calling the police," she said. Arizona woman makes domestic violence call. Police murder son. (And, of course, they execute the family pet as well.) (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2010 05:01 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 12, 2010 02:07 AM
For me, writing is a performance. "Portnoy's Complaint" was a performance. When you’re an actor who gives a performance, you have a false wig and a false mustache and a crooked back, and when you go backstage you take off...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2010 12:01 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2010 10:36 PM
if you have pets: Kate Hallock arrived at her Oakland hills home after running errands Tuesday and found a blue note fluttering on her front door. "Oakland police responded to your residence to investigate a burglar alarm," the handwritten note...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 05:28 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2010 06:34 AM
When I was hired at UC Berkeley way back when, I, along with everyone else, had to sign a loyalty oath to the State of California, swearing to uphold the California constitution and promising not to attempt to overthrow the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2010 05:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 10:15 PM
This is truly one of the strangest things I've ever seen on television: I wouldn't be at all surprised if were to turn out to be an Andy Kaufman-style performance-art hoax in the end. But maybe not, because people are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2010 05:38 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2010 06:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2010 03:41 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 07:26 PM
Chris snapped this photo of a T-shirt in a shop window in Groningen, Holland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 04:30 PM
I hadn't known that the character played by Richard E. Grant in the film Withnail and I was based on a specific, real person till I read this. The newly-published photos seem to be the main point of interest, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 27, 2010 07:06 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2010 05:49 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 26, 2010 10:06 AM
As you probably know, if only because I make a point of mentioning it any and every time the opportunity arises, I wrote a book about a girl who "dabbles into" witchcraft, etc. So when Christine O'Donnell's witchcraft-dabbling burst on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2010 04:35 AM
In 1975, William Borroughs saw "the Led Zeppelin group" and talked to Jimmy Page. (via the Agitator.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 16, 2010 12:33 AM
I used to have a cassette tape of songs recorded from the radio (from late night punk/new wave themed shows on AOR stations, college radio, and Dr. Demento -- along with the "imports" bin at the Columbus Tower Records...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2010 05:09 PM
Althouse responds to this slightly nutty op-ed on book-burning: I find it hard to believe that Niebuhr and hyperventilators like him are big readers of important books, because their minds seem pretty feeble to me. "Torch a book and you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2010 04:49 PM
I tried turning the comments back on after the last post, because I was curious if anyone would have anything to say about the YA discard bin referenced in it. Result: nearly 1000 spam messages in less than an hour....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2010 11:00 PM
-- At least they didn't shoot the dog. -- Also, don't get caught whittling. -- Also don't… well this one is kind of hard to sum up: don't be a male victim of a car accident, get mistaken for and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2010 02:43 AM
Anyone?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2010 05:30 PM
It appears that King Dork is responsible for introducing this guy to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. You're quite welcome, sir....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2010 07:19 PM
If the complaint summarized here is to be believed, ten El Reno, Oklahoma police officers, responding to a 911 call, used tasers on an 87-year-old bed-ridden woman because she "took a more aggressive posture in her bed" when they entered...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2010 09:10 PM
If you'd like to hear me doing "Goody Goody Gumdrops" and "Checkers Speech" over the phone as part of an interview-article about my career as a writer, head on over to The Switchboard Sessions....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2010 04:59 PM
on the "worst review he's ever had" An Irish Times review of a reading I gave of one of my children's books, Rover Saves Christmas, in Dublin. The reviewer referred to 'the stench of celebrity vanity'. I've seen him many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2010 06:18 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2010 10:48 PM
Here's a lengthy and quite engaging conversation between Michael Totten and Paul Berman on the subject of Berman's new, long-awaited book, The Flight of the Intellectuals. Long-awaited by me, at least. My copy should be arriving any day now, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2010 08:57 PM
The story has "legs" because of the terrifying, disgusting video. But this sort of thing happens with insane regularity all across the country. And sadly, shooting all the animals they can find appears to be part of the standard operating...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2010 08:27 PM
Police will have to find another pretext to break in and shoot your dogs. Caution, this is horrifying: The insult to injury bit is that they charged this guy for "child endangerment" because of the "small amount of marijuana" they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2010 04:57 PM
In a guest post on a Washington Post blog, Mitch Horowitz, author of the very entertaining Occult America, asserts that one of Ronald Reagan's oft-told parables about America's grand mission has as its direct source Manly P. Hall's tract "The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2010 05:24 PM
A few things I'm doing in May: On Saturday, May 1st, 1 - 3 PM, I'm going to be at Towne Center Books in Pleasanton along with Gennifer Choldenko, Elizabeth Partridge, Alexandra Bolger, Lisa Brown, Adele Griffin, Hillary Homzie, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2010 05:43 PM
1. I'm gonna be attending this dinner thing on Friday, April 16th at the San Francisco Public Library. Afterwards, I'll be doing this Porchlight All Stars storytelling thing (and playing a song I believe): Join us for an evening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2010 07:12 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2010 08:15 PM
As a little kid, quite a lot of my time was spent listening to and telling what we called "dirty jokes." Some of these were straightforward and followed a familiar logical pattern, and were thus easily construed, even by me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2010 08:58 PM
Here I am blathering a bit about the Catcher Cult on the Huffington Post. (This post's title is from a comment left on that post.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2010 07:30 PM
Are you aware that Safari 4.* saves two snapshots (a png and a jpeg file) of each web page you visit, as well as some seemingly random ones from your history or bookmarks? I wasn't, till I accidentally stumbled on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2010 08:25 PM
The mind is a funny place, or thing, or whatever it is. Don't ask me why, but yesterday I was trying to see if I could remember the lyrics to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I couldn't remember much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2010 10:14 PM
Thus begins a review of what looks to be quite an interesting book on the life and times of pulp occult novelist Dennis Wheatley....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2009 02:34 AM
George Monbiot expects quite a bit from Copenhagen....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2009 06:25 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2009 06:01 PM
About a year late (which is usually just about my speed) I finally got around to seeing that Baader-Meinhof Complex film (it's currently on netflix watch-instantly, which is how it came about that I finally got around to watching it.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2009 09:28 AM
Remembering the young Thomas Pynchon....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2009 07:19 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2009 07:46 PM
First you cut the meat off the bones. You start by severing the muscles from the joints with a sharp knife. The fibrous meat can then easily be scraped off, from top to bottom. After you've removed the flesh there's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 11:59 PM
Marie Mundaca reviews Andromeda Klein for the Hipster Bookclub. And the AK audiobook got a star from School Library Journal. Also, Rutila shares a personal moment; and leftik likes Rosalie van Genuchten's name....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2009 07:54 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2009 10:23 PM
Me, that is, on this podcast interview for the Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review. (The review is here.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2009 10:05 PM
Here's part two of Scott Butki's interview with yours truly. Part one may be found here. added: as the Cpt. points out in the comments, the link to part two isn't currently working. Not sure why. Try again later, I...
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Want to read another one? Sure you do!...
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Baby Got Books interviewed me about esotericism, magic, YA lit, Andromeda Klein, King Dork, Ozzy Osbourne and other stuff like that, and here's where to go to read it. They're also giving away a copy of Andromeda Klein, if anyone's...
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I've never seen the artwork on the CD package to Nathan's right before now, and I can't find it anywhere on line, either. (The one I'm familiar with has the book cover on the front and text on the...
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2009 05:16 PM
From J. Francis: Darby has you pegged. Yesterday she told me,"Dr. Frank isn't the kind of doctor you see when you are sick. He's the kind of doctor who writes books, like Dr. Seuss. And he sings, too."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 20, 2009 06:02 PM
Notes on playing an acoustic set at Gilman after all these years: -- the new (?) sound system is amazing. I remember the monitors being little more than visual props to make it look like what it would look like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 19, 2009 07:34 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 17, 2009 07:17 PM
A couple of notes on this weekend, in case you're planning to go. 1. My panel at the Teenquake thing tonight (10/16) begins at 8:00 and it's in Latino Rooms A & B in the lower level of the SF...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2009 07:48 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2009 04:41 PM
I almost got a migraine today. I rarely get full-blown ones anymore. When I was younger I'd get them every few months, and they would be utterly debilitating, taking me out of commission for four days or so, plus...
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2009 07:17 PM
Thanks to everyone who has come to an "event" or two over the past month or so. I've still got a few coming up, too, including tonight with Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor at Booksmith on Haight in SF. That's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2009 10:05 PM
(That's a whole lotta AK reader photos: Erika is #50.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2009 06:42 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2009 09:28 PM
A few more bloggy AK reviews here: -- from Leanne in Melbourne. -- from Jodi at Satan's Book Club: four forbidden fruits! -- and from the Avenging Sybil, who says that Sam Hellerman is still a genius....
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-- Anastasia interviewed me about Andromeda Klein for her book blog. -- Whitney A. Miller ruminates on certain extreme forms of getting into character: -- AK got four out of five pink unicorns here ; and a swell review here....
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 10:45 PM
It's been awhile since I updated my show listing info. Sometimes doing the shows gets in the way of listing the shows, which is far from ideal, I know, but then, most things are when you come right down...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2009 10:22 PM
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On/in Vol.1 Brooklyn....
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(Remember him?)...
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2009 01:42 PM
A couple of interviews that popped up in the last week that I haven't had a chance to link to before now: -- Alison Hallett of the Portland Mercury posted the entire interview upon which this article was based. --...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 23, 2009 01:40 PM
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(cf. three years ago.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2009 04:13 PM
If you were wondering how things went at the appearance at Word Brooklyn in Greenpoint yesterday, Alex Caprio has a report on it. I loved the format for the "show." I was asked to pick a person to interview me,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 20, 2009 04:06 PM
(She blogs at Girl Detective.)...
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Martha reports on last night's reading thing at Books, Inc. in SF. Chuck and Stephanie stopped by, as did Tony, and a bunch of other nice people, including quite a few students from Capuchino High School, also known as "Cap."...
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Gallery....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2009 07:31 PM
A kind, thoughtful review of Andromeda Klein from the Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2009 07:25 PM
Found in the street yesterday: A "practical and exhaustive treatise intended to meet the requirements of Manufacturers and Traders," with chapters like "Two Interesting Two-Piece Ice-Cream Brick Boxes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2009 11:21 PM
The guy who took it upon himself to review King Dork for Pajiba's "Cannonball Read" (basically an attempt to review 100 books in a year) really didn't dig the book's ambiguous resolution. Pajiba honcho Dustin Rowles -- a long-standing booster...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2009 10:27 PM
(from the Shelfari blog.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2009 04:22 PM
I just realized that this Los Angeles bookstore show/appearance was left out on previous lists, so here it is: Sunday, September 13, 2009: Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027 323-660-0232. 6PM - 8PM Full schedule after...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2009 07:36 AM
I think it is always more interesting to have people other than than the author read at lit events, if only to shake up the usual routine. In fact, I've been known to commandeer totally confused people in the venue...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2009 07:38 PM
1. I'm gonna be in Portland for one day only (9/15), doing school visits during the day and a Barnes & Noble in nearby Clackamas at 7 PM. Some friends threw together a last-minute show/party thing for after that at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2009 03:56 AM
One of several funny print-on-demand covers collected in this post from the Caustic Cover Critic: (Not included, but utterly captivating and baffling, is the one for Wuthering Heights.) Also, check out the Count of Monte Cristo in this complementary post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 1, 2009 10:19 PM
I'm going to be at the Books, Inc Opera Plaza location in San Francisco on Tuesday, 9/8, reading, singing songs, A-ing Qs, and just kind of standing around talking. 7PM. The flier to the right -- well, it's to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2009 09:17 AM
I wrote up a little thing about the Cato's show for teenreads.com. One thing I meant to include, but forgot, was that my mom was there and people asked her to sign their books. I know this because I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2009 05:02 PM
Kendra took this photo of Cato's's north end the other night:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 27, 2009 06:34 PM
That's where I'm gonna be along with all this stuff. Come by and say hi or just gawk at the spectacle. If you can't manage to come by, you can still gawk at the spectacle, provided the internet gods are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 26, 2009 12:20 AM
I have been pretty lame about listing stuff in a single place, so this is an attempt to put it together a bit. Here's what I know about what I know about: Saturday, August 22, 2009 KALX, Berkeley, 90.7 FM....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2009 07:10 PM
This link will give you a pdf of Chris's flier (two up) for the 8/25 Cato's Ale House show, in case anyone in the bay area feels like putting some up, or handing some out, or leaving them lying around...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 21, 2009 03:11 AM
Entertainment Weekly is streaming the A-side of the "Andromeda Klein" 7" if you'd like to hear it. You can pre-order the 7" (and the book) via this link. (The first 200 copies are going to be on red vinyl...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2009 07:40 PM
-- Mary Kole, yet another MTX fan who grew up to be a writer and lit agent, attended my editor's YA "voice" workshop at the SCWBI conference in LA last week. Here she selects three of my songs as a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2009 10:21 PM
...of Andromeda Klein in Booklist: Portman’s follow-up to King Dork (2006) will leave some readers turning to less demanding fare, like, say, advanced calculus. Yet it’s a must-read simply because of how rare it is to see any topic tackled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2009 12:57 AM
Bookdwarf wonders if this is the best book cover ever: I'd vote yes. The "flap copy" is does the job as well: They speak German. They carry whips. And they are connected in some mysterious way with Nazi experiments carried...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 5, 2009 08:19 PM
Read all about the Mick Jones Guerilla Rock'n'Roll Public Library here. And this is as good an occasion as any to re-post a photo of King Dork's finest hour:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2009 06:38 PM
The MTX's smarter, more Sacramento-y half, Bobby and Ted, have launched a new music website called Rock Show USA. Take it away, Bobby: We're just getting started, but we have some big plans in the works to provide some really...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2009 07:48 PM
Walter Cronkite never had much of an impact on my own life, and I probably wouldn't have any sort of feeling about him one way or another if it weren't for Lizard Music. But because of Lizard Music, I do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2009 01:31 AM
Word on the street is that Andromeda Klein is going to get a star in Booklist. One star out of how many, you may ask? Answer: one out of one. It's crazy but that's the star system established by the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2009 07:57 PM
You know what's weird? I haven't officially released a record in five years, unless you count the acoustic songs that were included on the King Dork audio book. Well, maybe it's not so weird, what with all the other stuff...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2009 08:12 PM
I know not why, but the word "random" always lends a whimsical, arch character to any word it is added to: e.g. "a seemingly endless succession of random facial expressions"; "random acts of the apostles"; "some random Member (of Parliament)";...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2009 01:24 AM
I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number now. All a publisher has to do is write cheques at intervals, while a lot...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2009 11:23 PM
... who they would get to read the Andromeda Klein audio book? Well, I'll tell you anyway. It's an actress named Deirdre Lovejoy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2009 11:54 PM
... if Alice Hoffman's twitter outburst exemplifies how not to respond to unfavorable reviews, this song by an actor in response to a critic who slagged his singing pretty much works. (NSFW, I'd guess.) And the critic responds here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2009 03:44 PM
A very famous novelist named Alice Hoffman flipped out over a lukewarm review in the Boston Globe on twitter over the weekend, publishing the reviewer's email and phone number and inviting readers to harass her. (Hoffman's twitter account has now...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 30, 2009 02:22 AM
Going to see this re-created William Blake exhibition today: the poor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are unintelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character by caricature representation,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2009 09:43 AM
Question posted on Yahoo! Answers. Anyone?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2009 08:45 PM
72, huh? Interesting... A.V. Club's Hater has some fun with Hasbro's new, extremely pink, Ouija board for girls. Cameron the Mad Oujia Board Person has some caveats in the reviews, however: One how cold you se it because it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2009 05:47 PM
Every day people arrive at this weblog via searches through Google or other search engines. I'm not systematic about it, but I do glance through these referrals every now and then and save those that are funny, weird, disturbing, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 15, 2009 08:17 PM
Practically every conversation I ever have with anyone eventually gets around to this question. What they're wondering about is the status of potential King Dork film. For some time now I really haven't had much of an answer. The option...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2009 08:48 PM
Emerging from the vortex I mentioned below, getting caught up on current events, I learn via Young Manhattanite by way of fimoculous that Steve Wiebe of King of Kong fame just set a new Donkey Kong Jr. record on March...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2009 08:17 PM
The kids on the pop-punk message "bored" have been complaining about the fact that this here blog is a shadow of its former self, and I can see their point. Basically, I've been lost in the novel-writing vortex. Has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2009 07:54 PM
Found in North Oakland....
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(via Lex -- thanks, man.)...
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You know what's great? This....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2008 11:06 PM
One weird thing about having been in the fifth grade in 1975 is that you end up having memories of things like the "cool kids" standing around at recess air-keyboarding the Daryl Dragon *wow* sound from the chorus of "Love...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 23, 2008 11:46 PM
Ross Douthat yawns at the latest alleged what's-it in the presidential race, and it's hard not to yawn along with him: Barack Obama, who once claimed to embody sweeping, once-in-a-generation change, has ended up running a cautious, negative, and deeply...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2008 06:11 PM
Ann Althouse gets the best comments....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2008 03:07 AM
Three of the reasons I kind of wanted Obama to win:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2008 02:00 AM
As many of you may know, taking a picture of yourself reading can be kind of difficult, but I gave it a shot. I was one of the vaguely "punk"-related writers who read at the Edinburgh Castle along with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2008 01:36 AM
A New Zealand judge has made a 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name can be changed from Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, the country's national news agency reported Thursday. That one is pretty bad,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2008 07:24 AM
The recitation of label names in that Reunion song put me in mind of the label list-patter verse of the Freshies song with this post's title. It's one of my all-time favorite singles, and one of a handful of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2008 07:17 PM
I've seen quite a few text-cloud applets over the past few years, but Wordle is perhaps the coolest one yet. Here are the randomly generated Wordle text-clouds of the 150 most common words in the first chapters of each of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2008 08:05 PM
Man cuts off own head. (via Sasha and a few others.) Speaking of which, sort of, I'm off for an evening of "punk" at the Edinburgh Castle now. Okay....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2008 12:45 AM
The King Dork audiobook in mp3 form is now available on eMusic, and in conjunction with that they have put up this Q&A....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2008 09:36 PM
Whatever the merits of Kozinski Kontroversy, the judge's antagonist seems to have amassed a pretty impressive collection of judicial reprimands -- all from "biased" judges, naturally -- but among those posted by Ted Frank of Overlawyered, this is the funniest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2008 07:51 PM
After single-handedly creating the Kozinski pseudo-scandal with a deliberately misleading and inflammatory story, the LA Times cheekily advises the parties to chill. Via Patterico, who also posts a courtly, quite well-written letter from Kozinski's wife. Meanwhile, the seeds sown by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2008 04:27 PM
I have no serious doubts that M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie is every bit as awful as people say it is, but this list of the eighteen worst things about it actually makes it seem kind of awesome. (Warning: there...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2008 09:32 PM
If you haven't been following the Kozinski "porn" scandal, look here and here. I'm not sure I agree with Lessig about how reasonable it is to expect that people won't paw through your personal stuff if you leave it unattended...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2008 07:24 PM
From an old Christie's auction: (via boingboing.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2008 05:35 PM
From Lucy Ellmann's review of Chuck Palahniuk's latest: So not only has America tried to ruin the rest of the world with its wars, its financial meltdown and its stupid stupid food, it has allowed its own literary culture to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2008 10:47 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2008 12:29 AM
Or rather, my book has, which is close enough. It is apparently "Internet Week" in New York at the moment, and John Carney of Dealbreaker.com brought his King Dork paperback along to the Thrillist.com party just in case the party...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2008 05:38 AM
The brainy sophisticates at Crooked Timber take a curmudgeonly turn and nominate movies "to avoid watching before you die," meaning, more or less, films that are so horrible they should never be seen by anyone. Taste is taste, and like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2008 06:31 PM
Is there a word for that particular type of distress you feel when you observe someone outside your own reference group referencing something that only people in your reference group are supposed to know about? Further, is there a word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2008 03:11 AM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2008 08:52 AM
Commenting on political stuff, whatever you say, only makes people mad, so it's hardly worth doing because who needs the aggravation? But say what you will about Boris Johnson, and notwithstanding the probability that he will spend most of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2008 12:50 AM
An email from a Gawker staffer's mom....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2008 06:43 PM
If you spent much time avoiding real work on the internet last week, you probably came across the story of Priya Venkatesan, the postmodern-ish Dartmouth writing instructor who sent a series of bizarre emails threatening to sue her undergraduate students...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2008 07:17 AM
Like so many of us, Spice Girl Geri Halliwell has "hung up her hotpants" in order to write children's books: With storylines including the feisty heroine seeing off playground bullies and foiling art thieves, each instalment of the book will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2008 07:43 PM
Fox News graphic illustrates a reference to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: (via Wonkette.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2008 08:05 PM
An animal protection group is investigating claims made by British band The Fall[']s Mark E. Smith that he killed two endangered red squirrels and condones the deliberate running over of seagulls, it said Thursday. The revered but unpredictable frontman of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2008 05:24 PM
Cheesoid is Everyman:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2008 11:17 PM
Greg Graffin to receive the Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence award....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2008 02:06 AM
Glenn Reynolds flags this case: a lawyer sends out threatening letters to nineteen area hair salons, claiming that the different prices they charge to men and women are causing him "mental anguish," and demanding $1000 from each to avoid facing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2008 01:27 AM
Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, said during a conference call with reporters that Clinton would not pick a running mate who has not met the “national security threshold” — as Clinton’s military advisers and Wolfson put it on the call...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2008 08:04 PM
Was Maximum Rock'n'Roll the National Review, or merely the Commentary, of hardcore zines? Yglesias commenters debate....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2008 01:00 AM
So, tomorrow at Moe's in Berkeley, 7:30. Songs, reading, standing around talking, etc: If you can't make it to the thing, you can still order an autographed copy of the new paperback King Dork here or here. The paperback edition...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2008 11:29 PM
via Luke in the comments, the stirring testimony of a man who refused to let Hurricane Katrina have the final word on his Road to Ruin, posted on a website called Whiskerino. And here is The Drifter:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2008 01:22 AM
...otherwise known around here as King Dork Paperback Day. So go ahead and buy one and tell your friends about it and ask bookstores to stock it and call up your local radio station to request it and get a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2008 11:24 PM
Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2008 06:33 PM
The King Dork paperback officially comes out on Feb. 12. and vaguely related to it is this stuff: Saturday, February 9: I'm going to be attending this Berkeley Public Library dinner thing. Monday, Feb. 25: I'll be at Moe's Books...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2008 06:16 PM
I would guess that within each writer-editor pair in the English-speaking world, one party has emailed this particular clip to the other today, and mine was no exception:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2008 06:59 PM
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Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2008 10:56 PM
Photo from this page referencing this band, via an email from Kevin B....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2008 02:30 AM
As you can see, I just got a few advance copies of the King Dork paperback, which is officially out on Feb. 12. It includes a "preview" of a chunk of the first chapter of Andromeda Klein in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2008 10:15 PM
An Althouse commenter notes that Hillary Clinton's deputy campaign manager appears to be a lolcat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2007 08:52 PM
From Hez: I brought Frank Portman's book King Dork on my trip. I read the thing in two days. It was really good. In the book, the main character makes up a band with his best friend. They change the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2007 07:43 PM
I'm basically a good citizen, i.e., I'm terrified of what the government will do to me if I don't knuckle under to its outrageous demands. Today they're re-distributing more of my imaginary income from the future to those more fortunate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2007 01:04 AM
There are six very friendly people on this web page who want to tell you all about the "washlet," a toilet seat apparatus that incorporates a "bunch of nifty technology," including a "small wand" and a remote control unit with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 9, 2007 03:08 AM
Someone recently arrived at this blog via a google search for how to write a punk song. I checked out the list and found this essay. "It really all depends on what type of punk you want to write," says...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2007 08:05 PM
Few T shirts, especially cheaply produced home-made punk rock ones, survive intact for twenty years. For some reason, though, I have this Crimpshrine shirt from back then that has really hung in there. I don't think about it too much,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2007 08:36 PM
From Mark Steyn's column on Larry Craig: My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. "Never go to a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 3, 2007 07:23 PM
I'd say that characterization, from Matt Yglesias over at the Atlantic.com, would be a top contender for my epitaph, if I ever end up needing one. I daresay Matt is right, in the sense that I would not be terribly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2007 12:16 AM
A lot of people out there seem to think this guy would make a good Sam Hellerman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 20, 2007 10:11 PM
Penguin's British edition of King Dork officially comes out on August 2nd (though it has had an early release in Australia, as I understand it.) I just got a copy in the mail, as you can see. It appears...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2007 08:46 PM
Not really. But April 1 will be Cheap Trick Day in Illinois, if the votes go the right way. Guitarist Rick Nielsen got a warm welcome when he visited the state Senate today. He told lawmakers that the band's achievements...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2007 09:38 PM
Somehow or other, this napkin drawing managed to find its way into my copy of Crime and Punishment:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2007 09:47 PM
From Nikki, who disagrees with Tom Henderson's assessment of the Doors in the King Dork glossary:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2007 01:29 AM
The King Dork paperback is due out on December 26, 2007, and can be pre-ordered from Amazon now, if anyone feels like doing that. The UK edition (out in August) can also be pre-ordered from Amazon.co.uk. That's all I got...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2007 08:44 PM
All the links I've seen concerning Barack Obama's remark in re: Morgan Freeman characterize it as a "slip" or a "gaffe," but it's clearly a joke, and a pretty funny one, too....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 21, 2007 01:03 AM
Dinesh D'Souza's stock isn't too high these days in the wake of what I understand is a perfectly dreadful recent book, but I have to agree with Clive Davis that he has a point here. (I refer to the opening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2007 09:09 PM
I'm also going to be at this thing. The Times Book Club Author Gala. Tues. May 1st. 7 PM. Hofmann Theatre at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Locust Street at Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. I've never been to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2007 06:20 PM
A supermarket chain got itself into a huge muddle over the meaning of Easter yesterday in its attempt to sell more chocolate eggs. “Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2007 04:35 PM
They don't reveal who donated the cells to create this sheep-human, but it looks as though it might have been Donald Sutherland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2007 01:15 AM
I just noticed that the British edition of King Dork from Penguin/Puffin is up on Amazon.co.uk. Pub date: August 2. The copyediting for it has been pretty interesting. They went for a "light Anglicization," which means stuff like "favourite"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2007 07:35 PM
Newsweek's Periscope section has a newish feature called "A Life in Books," where authors are asked to supply a list of five notable books and answer a couple of booky questions. Last week it was Harold Bloom; and, believe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2007 04:02 AM
This was the scene earlier today outside Cybelle's Pizza on Piedmont Avenue, just down the street from Cato's Ale House where I spent today writing. The cops had closed off the street and brought in a SWAT team and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2007 02:35 AM
-- from Scott Butki at Blogcritics.org. -- in Estella's Revenge. (I have a vague notion that this particular interview might have appeared somewhere else earlier as well, but I could well be mistaken about that.) And, by the way, here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2007 04:40 PM
Every day people arrive at this weblog via searches through Google or other search engines. I'm not systematic about it, but I do glance through these referrals every now and then and save those that are funny, weird, disturbing, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2007 06:28 AM
Blogging teachers discuss "famous pieces of literature they can't stand or don't like to teach (but would never admit it to the class.)" (I stumbled on it because of a google alert pointing me to this guy, whose entry mentions...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2007 11:32 PM
Here's another gem via Clive Davis, a snip of an interview with John Mortimer in a Paris Review's "Art of Fiction" interview: I found writing novels rather a lonely business. You very rarely actually catch anyone reading them. I've heard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2007 11:58 PM
I had never before seen this original version of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, featuring two future Pythons, Tim Brooke-Taylor (later of the Goodies) and Marty Feldman. Thanks, Clive!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2007 05:24 PM
I keep having these dreams involving this rabbit: UPDATE: via Richard in the comments. I think this may be Rudi:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2007 03:50 PM
Posting has been light, and may be light for awhile, till (a) I fill in the rest of the words in this file entitled novel.doc; or till (b) I hit a wall and require distraction while figuring out how to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2007 08:41 PM
Laurell K. Hamilton is, I gather, the author of a popular series of vampire books, only known to me because of this widely-linked (and possibly rather ill-advised) lengthy essay denouncing her "negative readers." Here's a snip of the section in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2007 05:02 PM
It's been a heck of a year for me, really, and to cap it off, King Dork has somehow managed to infiltrate the Entertainment Weekly's top ten books of the year list. I know, I was surprised, too. It's not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2006 04:33 PM
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. No, seriously, I do. I haven't read either of Sam Harris's anti-religion books - a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon - so it is possible that I've got the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2006 07:05 PM
I can't remember this many little earthquakes "in a row" at any time in my life....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2006 05:48 PM
Clive Davis, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, scans the reviews of the short-lived Broadway adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and finds a humdinger of an unintentional double entendre: best of all in this show is Will Chase's pitch-perfect performance as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2006 03:23 AM
I'm actually not sure I don't prefer the botched version of the joke, in the end, but the correction to this NYT obituary of comedian Sid Raymond, which adds insult to injury by screwing up his final punchline, is kind...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2006 07:36 PM
Erika of Little Type tells me she's getting lots of Christmas orders for autographed books and Sam Hellerman shirts and so forth. Which is great to know, and thanks and everything. But I figure it can't hurt to slip...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2006 02:50 AM
Here's a review-poem I found on the internet: wnt off to hg mall. rotted at the library. read this king dork book. utterly retarded. but highly entertaining. cos tht dork is funny. he IS retarded. so i kinda lik...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2006 05:42 PM
I'm not turning into a catblogger, I promise. But you would be surprised at how many requests I've received for more pictures of Matilda, and I'm feeling kind of Christmas-y and sentimental so here she is once again, freshly microchipped...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2006 09:52 PM
Cindy & Bert perform Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" with lyrics rewritten in German to tell the story of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on German TV circa 1970: (via Germans Under Cover by way of WFMU.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2006 09:07 PM
Richard Dawkins on Elvis: I should have known better because of course practically all Americans of that class are religious maniacs. But when I discovered that Elvis was religious I went back on to religion for a bit. (via Norm.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2006 04:43 PM
So Matilda (the cat who ran off and has been missing for the past week) is back. We did all the usual things, putting up fliers, staking out shelters day by day, knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2006 08:14 PM
[Photo of Lindsey reading King Dork deleted to preserve the archives, viewable here -- ed. 03.01.18] You may have noticed that I've been posting photos of people reading my book. It all started with this picture posted by Anarchie...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2006 07:57 PM
The reading at Moe's went quite well, I thought. I read the bit about the first band practice to feature Sam Hellerman's mail-ordered bass. When the part came up, I played the chorus of the song "Losers Like You" instead...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2006 05:58 PM
As you may know (and if you don't know you will know very soon - just wait till the end of this parenthetical phrase... here it comes... and: now!) I have a little arrangement with Pat and Erika of Little...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2006 10:27 PM
If you want to witness Joel Stein writing about King Dork in Time Magazine and comparing me to Mark Twain, sort of, go here. (I like the Chris Henchy quote.) UPDATE: I'll tell you what: it sure is weird to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2006 04:31 AM
Long-time readers of this blog, if there still are any, may remember Neil Clark, the eccentric British journalist most noted (by me, at any rate) for an article entitled "Slobodan Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience." He once sent me an email...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2006 05:12 PM
Gir set up some stuff that, we hope, will make the comment spam more soft and manageable, so I'm turning the comments back on just to see what happens. Only posts on the main page will allow comments. Comments on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2006 01:16 AM
Pajiba comments on the King Dork movie news in its Weekly Trade Round-up....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2006 12:09 AM
I've been getting lots of calls and mail about it, so clearly the story is out, but I may as well mention it here anyway. The film rights to King Dork were acquired by the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay Paramount/Vantage production...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2006 07:11 PM
The King Dork paperback is some time away, but we're working on copyedits for it now. I haven't found too many errors, but I am not known for my attention to detail. If anyone has noticed any typos or other...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2006 05:21 PM
That Litquake thing was - well, here's an account of it. Everyone, including the big shots, were very friendly backstage. Everyone got a tote bag. Dan Hicks read from The Catcher in the Rye. I could hear a few giggles...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2006 05:28 PM
Adèle Geras, author most recently of Ithaka among many others, and wife of Norm Geras, took King Dork with her on a train journey and has written a very sweet and generous review....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 6, 2006 04:14 PM
A couple of years ago, spending New Year's Eve in a tiny, spooky, slightly hobbit-y village in Norfolk, England, I happened to be talking to a lady who worked in the British publishing industry. When I mentioned that my first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2006 04:39 PM
As I mentioned, John Green is blog-touring for his new book, An Abundance of Katherines. Today's stop is this here blog. As I've written and recorded approximately a zillion breakup songs, and since John's novel is perhaps the ultimate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2006 07:00 AM
6 October, 2006 I mentioned this a ways back, but it's coming up soon so here it is again. I'm appearing at the opening night of "Litquake" which is a highfalutin San Francisco literary festival type thing. The title is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 30, 2006 12:19 AM
John Green (of Looking for Alaska fame) has a swell new book, An Abundance of Katherines. Remember that bloggy virtual book tour I did in the first week of King Dork's release? Well, John is doing a blog tour...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2006 06:35 PM
That's the cafeteria of Capuchino HIgh School in San Bruno, where I did an "author event" last night organized by those swell gals of Books, Inc./NYMBC in concert with a student reading group called "You Say Read, We Say...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 28, 2006 05:20 PM
Daniel Robert Epstein Suicide Girlses me....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2006 06:39 PM
Our increased appetite for non-fiction is a crucial factor in both the inception of A Million Little Pieces and the subsequent persecution of James Frey - a persecution that seems particularly vicious when you consider that a man who is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2006 06:24 PM
I have to say I'm pretty surprised to learn that Black Swan Green didn't make the Booker short list....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2006 06:03 PM
From the "about me" page of a Spiritual Life Coach advertising in the National Catholic Reporter classifieds: Mr. Young's spiritual path has been rich and varied leading him from the Presbyterianism in which he was raised, through agnosticism, New Age...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 13, 2006 03:46 PM
As I mentioned earlier, my friend Tristin was commissioned by salon.com to write a follow-up to her widely-linked, -forwarded, and -discussed essay about her experience of losing a close friend in the 9/11 attacks. As so often on these internets...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2006 06:29 PM
For many Oakland residents, the horrifying case of Sandra Tellis has become an emblem of the dramatic increase of violent crime in this city over the last couple of years. She was beaten, tied to "an object" and set on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 12, 2006 12:35 AM
That post about Robin's Sam Hellerman triggered the following message from Sasha: I've come back and read this last entry several times already. It makes me terribly sad, but I keep re-reading it anyway. Alisha Cooke (a.k.a. Ralphie, later Twitch)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2006 05:04 PM
Steven Rubio used this site to create this graphic teaser for the website for his King Dork-reading college course: In the same general sort of ballpark, Robin writes in, with the subject line "My Sam Hellerman...": ...was Anna Wareham. Our...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 6, 2006 01:26 AM
I keep meaning to mention: Random House presents The King Dork Band Name Generator. Submit! And speaking of band names, Chris Parker, transatlantic King Dork reader and TV writer (for such shows as Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, and East Enders) sends...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 06:07 PM
I believe I've gotten more feedback on the basis of this review in the American Airlines in-flight magazine than from any other recent King Dork press. I guess people really do read these things... (Nice piece, too.) And here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 04:31 PM
Tony found this letter in the Mission a couple of years ago. Transcription: March 10, 1998 Mark [last name not transcribed] my dear Man, Hi pumpkin pie-head! So how's the life of the emotional abuser? Don't worry I'm stable...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 24, 2006 01:47 AM
Get with us. We're like dough in your pockets....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 23, 2006 02:49 AM
From time to time, this blog presents a Google-ympics, in which interesting search strings that have brought people to this site are categorized and listed. At the end, a winner is proclaimed. This is one of those times, so here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2006 05:57 PM
Sasha's phone: (By the way, when I played that song at my recent appearance at Amoeba in LA, this guy who was offended by it went around the store hassling various fans. He complained to the management and accused them...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2006 07:14 PM
This picture arrived with the following note: As a graduate of Hillsdale High School (Hillsdale Knights) in San Mateo, class of '83, and as one of the few punk rockers, I can honestly tell you that you nailed every...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2006 06:21 PM
I just listed a few new shows/appearances. In addition to the rock and roll show on the flier above, we've got: Thursday, August 17. A reading/singing/signing at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704. 510 649 1320. and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2006 05:47 PM
That's Andrew Krucoff, the man who helped me and King Dork dominate the internets in the release week and following. He organized a party at the Gawker office before my show at the Sidewalk Cafe. Even though it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2006 04:18 PM
I suppose it's a chain of association that could only happen in the age of the internets: cultural-political journalist Reihan Salam discovers the Kinks through reading King Dork, which was recommended to him by someone who noticed the title on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 13, 2006 05:19 PM
New York City is perhaps not quite at its best in the summer, but soul-sapping heat and peculiar smells aside, so far so good over here. I dropped in on a handful of bookshops in Manhattan to say hi...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2006 01:51 PM
In Hollywood, as I've recently learned, people use the phrase "see the movie." As in "can you see the movie in this?" Or great character, but I'm not sure I can "see the movie." JB says he's on board and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2006 04:34 PM
I didn't have time to do a whole lot of sight-seeing in Milan, but we did manage to fit in some of it. This sign was at the entrance to the cathedral at Como, a nice lakeside town near the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2006 04:48 PM
[Pic of Kari reading King Dork deleted to preserve the archives. It may be viewed here-- ed. 03.01.18.] (a) My book was in the "Must List" issue of Entertainment Weekly. (I had to miss this party because I was in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2006 12:40 AM
Last week I went to the wedding of Beppe and Sara in Milan, Italy. Beppe first saw my band when we opened for Green Day on an Italian tour c. 1995 and he has been a big fan ever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2006 05:32 PM
There is a terrific interview with Paul Berman in the current Democratiya. Excerpt: In the pre-modern age the rational and the irrational could both be understood. It was possible to think and to speak about such things as the soul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2006 04:38 PM
Man, being able to post again is weird - I feel kind of like I'm getting away with something, so I better act fast. If anyone notices, I could be in big trouble... But while it lasts, it's like some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2006 05:07 PM
,,,and I'm not. As you have probably figured out, my blog has been totally broken lately. I get crazy error messages when I try to do anything with it at all, which puts the posting process far beyond my rather...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2006 12:19 AM
Colleen Mondor's new Bookslut column is about various and quite different recent literary attempts to evoke the high school experience. She reviews several YA novels, including Dairy Queen, Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies), Nailed, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2006 08:53 PM
As I've mentioned, I've got this sweet set-up with Pat and Erika of Little Type: they sell autographed copies of King Dork. They're the only people doing this over the internets, and lots of people are ordering them (and thanks!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2006 10:02 PM
That's Michele of Faster than the World (né A Small Victory) reading King Dork. (Ever hear a schoolbus story in which Sparks' "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" plays a role? Here's one.) Had a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2006 06:23 PM
I just realized my comments are totally buggered up. I'm trying to figure it out. In the meantime, if you have a burning comment or question you'll have to email me (see mailto link to the right.) Or, you...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2006 04:58 PM
I had never heard of "ableism" before reading this article about how we, or at least the professors of literature among us, ought perhaps to "consign certain books to the back shelves of our consciousness" for political or sensitivity reasons....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 10:58 PM
I love this rather desperate-sounding novelty song manifesto, the back of a "Looney Tunes Medley" radio promo 45 by the Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1983: (Thanks, Gabe.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 04:07 PM
Here's more stuff about my book I found on the internets: (a) Megan McCafferty wrote this swell blurb. (b) This piece ran in Friday's Oklahoman. (login: blogsofwar@yahoo.co.uk; password: blogsofwar.) (c) The Village Voice's Tom Breihan ruminates on East Bay...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2006 01:04 AM
More shows here. UPDATE: As Kenny Kaos and others have pointed out, the date on the flier is wrong. It should be Thursday, May 25. I have alerted the proper authorities....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2006 06:32 PM
- I'm told they are ordering up a fifth printing now. - It's like Day of the Locust with King Dork out there in Hollywoodland. If I understood enough about the tales of intrigue and drama and general craziness...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2006 04:25 PM
For all my Oklahoma friends: I had a great time talking to George Lang of The Oklahoman yesterday. He interviewed me for an article for Friday's paper, and blogged about it here. For my San Francisco friends, feel free...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2006 06:19 PM
There was a time when Michele's A Small Victory was one of the best and most heavily-trafficked blogs around. It was always one of my top five back in those days. It was sad when she pulled the plug last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2006 04:19 PM
More booky items: (a) I'm told we're on the third printing now and that they're making plans for a fourth. As a lot of people have pointed out, Amazon appears to have run out of stock. They're supposed to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2006 03:24 PM
Nick snapped this photo at Gilman last night:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2006 06:59 PM
That's my buddy Lane Smith, reading King Dork and being aware of his own mortality. As I've mentioned, I had a great time hanging out with Lane and playing songs for his big but mostly fairly short audience last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2006 07:13 PM
(a) Matt Berman of Common Sense Media turns in this nice "family friendly" review of KD. (b) Yesterday's USA Today had a piece on me and my quirky self, by Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson. And here's a Pop Candy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 09:16 PM
My mom found this "story" I wrote in first or second grade. The beginning of my fiction career. I'm not sure what the boy's mistake was, but according to the accompanying illustration, it somehow involved a horse as well as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 06:25 PM
Everybody's flogging a book these days. Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin has a book out on 30 July. It's a "discussion" with Professor Preston Jones on the subject: Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? I haven't seen the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2006 06:18 PM
Hey, welcome to another installment of the Google-ympics. Here are some recent searches that brought inquiring minds to this blog's url, divided into categories. Practical: a fish restaurant in downtown Belgrade how do I trim my own hair how to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2006 09:12 PM
So, to everyone's surprise, there has been quite a media-gasm surrounding my book. I'm used to being covered not at all, not even slightly. Before the street date, I was going around saying "man, I hope Punk Planet runs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 3, 2006 01:53 AM
As you can see, Kendra ended up with at least one King Dork too many. So she's holding a contest to give away the excess. She's calling it The King Dork Band Name Contest. The full description of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2006 08:50 PM
I'm a big fan of Whitney Matheson's Pop Candy blog on the USA Today site, so it was cool to see her critiquing yet perpetuating the King Dork buzz over there the other day. When they're comparing your book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 27, 2006 04:56 PM
If you're in the market for an autographed copy of King Dork and you can't make any of my upcoming appearances, you might consider web-ordering one from Little Type. I hung out with Pat and Erika the other day and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2006 04:24 AM
I don't know if you've noticed it, but, believe it or not there's an amazingly prominent review of King Dork in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, with this huge-ass photo of me (taken by my friend Paige O'Donoghue.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2006 06:14 PM
My buddy Lane Smith is on tour now, and he snapped this photo at a Barnes & Noble in St. Paul, Minn. This was the first evidence I'd seen of my book being in an actual store, and it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2006 05:24 PM
Welcome to the fifth and final stop on the King Dork Litzkrieg Bop Virtual Book Tour, presented by Andrew Krucoff. Today we'll be at Jane Magazine on-line. Our reading is about high school jazz band and the song is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2006 07:21 PM
4/5ths of the way through the tour. The tension is building. Tempers start to fray. The drummer is sulking in the back of the van. You're getting slightly tired of the Supersize Me diet. Sausage McMuffins for breakfast, chicken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2006 06:09 PM
For Day Three of the Litzkrieg Bop virtual book tour, we're stopping by Largehearted Boy's place. This is one of my all-time favorite music/culture blogs and I read it religiously (if religiously, as Bertram might say, is the word I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2006 07:56 PM
Dr. Robin says these books are dangerous in many ways. "[They] are defining for girls who they are, making them think they're choosing it, and then profiting off of the demise of a whole generation of girls and women," she...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2006 06:23 PM
I am about halfway through Brendan Halpin's newish rock and roll novel A Long Way Back, and I'm really enjoying it. I probably would be further along in the book if I didn't keep pausing to read his blog, which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2006 08:43 AM
People who find it tiresome when a guy aggregates stuff about his book and posts it on his blog are probably not going to be too happy with Dr. Frank's What's-It for the next couple of weeks. I'm afraid it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2006 05:47 PM
Leila Roy's Bookshelves of Doom has always been among my favorite book blogs, so I'm pretty stoked at (or should that be "over" or "about"?) her real sweet review of King Dork. And Michael Schaub and Colleen Mondor of Bookslut...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2006 05:46 PM
Salon's Rebecca Traister quotes some crabby comments from a Huffington Post blurb about the wedding of NBC's Campbell Brown and Fox's Dan Senor, adding: Let's hear it for those on the left who dismiss a man they don't like by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2006 05:19 PM
(a) There's an article in this week's East Bay Express about me, King Dork, books about rock and roll, songs about girls, and my book release thing at Cato's. (The caricature by Norman Dog is almost unique among caricatures,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2006 05:59 PM
Nikki Sudden, I mean. On the night of Epic Soundtracks' death, my band happened to be playing a show at London's Garage, and I dedicated the set to him. (I doubt there were many in the crowd who had any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2006 05:06 PM
Hey, anyone out there who has some time on his or her hands and is good (and fast) at making fliers, would you want to help me out with a flier for my book release show thing at Cato's? Details...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2006 07:24 PM
Ahmed Akkari, the Danish imam who stoked the flames of the cartoon conflagration, has been caught on hidden camera threatening to have an elected moderate Muslim politician blown up. "I am deeply sorry about the remark," he said. "[It] was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2006 05:27 PM
As you may have noticed, my book is being published under the name "Frank Portman," which is my actual real name. There was some discussion over whether to use the more familiar "Dr. Frank" on the book cover, but the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2006 02:20 AM
Kirkus is an important book review journal that is notorious for its anonymous, often quite snarky reviews. Almost since the beginning of the recent launch of my so-called literary career people have been warning me to brace myself for a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2006 07:55 PM
The Stephens Island Wren may have been the only passerine bird entirely incapable of flight. In any case, its flightlessness evolved during its long residence on the island, where there were not enough threats to make the ability to fly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 13, 2006 06:54 AM
Larry Livermore is one of the few people out there who have read King Dork, and he says some really nice things about it in this essay on the vagaries of the "punk" novel. I've never read the other book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2006 01:15 AM
There's an interview with yours truly in the librarian/pop culture blog Pop Goes the Library. (The Q's are from this swell gal named Sophie; the A's are from me - that's what I meant by "yours truly" in case it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2006 12:13 AM
Even when you know that the "MTX" in the MTX Youth High School Ministry stands for "Mountain Top Experience" rather than the (to us) more familiar term, it's still pretty fun to browse the youth ministry site of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2006 03:30 AM
LUCKY for little Ursinus College that Mark David Chapman is securely locked away, or the J.D. Salinger-obsessed John Lennon slayer might be applying for the liberal arts college's new scholarship award. The Collegeville, Penn., school - where Salinger spent his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2006 09:29 PM
Like many San Franciscans, Chronicle columnist Joan Ryan rather overestimates how charming it is to go around telling everyone how much better you are than everyone else. (via Larry.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2006 09:26 PM
Salon's Rebecca Traister weighs in on Margaret 3K: speaking of Margaret, it makes me a little sad to think that girls (and boys) who get to know her now don't know that she had to pick the color of her...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2006 03:21 AM
It's been awhile since I've held a Google-ympics, so, well, I here I go. These are google searches that have brought people to this site recently, divided into categories. The winner is at the end. (a) simple questions: yiddish word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2006 01:40 AM
Riverhead has dropped James Frey. I have to say, I'm actually a little surprised. He had a two book contract with them, and I imagine the advance was substantial. What happens then? I think he probably has to give at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2006 05:23 PM
Beth found this song on the bus in the Gilman St. area. Transcribed as found, underlining set as italics. Twist of Faith When I first felt the Holy Ghost Power I try to stand tuFF Lord, [first word scratched out]...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2006 10:50 PM
The redoubtable Leon Wieseltier takes on contemporary Scientism, Brightness, biological reductionism, "evo-psychobabble," and Daniel Dennett's new book: "Breaking the Spell" is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions. The orthodoxies of evolutionary...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2006 06:13 PM
Marc W. points out (in the comments to my earlier post on the word "quite") that Hugh Laurie addressed the topic in a recent Playboy Magazine Q&A: I'm constantly confused by the difference between the English and American quite. They're...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2006 05:27 PM
It will take awhile, but bear with me: eventually this post will explain how I came to record two songs for Lane Smith's terrific new picture book, the Beatles-y, Founding Father-y John, Paul, George, and Ben. Herewith, the post:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2006 03:41 PM
Well, I daresay this isn't the first time one of my tunes has wound up on a Valentine's Day mix/playlist, but it may well be the first time that such a list has wound up in the Village Voice. It's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2006 09:34 PM
As I've mentioned before once or twice, the word "quite" has a different meaning in British English than it does in American English. In American English, the word "quite" means "quite," whereas in British English the meaning is more like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2006 07:01 AM
Man, I know it's in poor taste, and possibly dangerous if people "of faith" know where you live, yadda yadda yadda, but there's just no way this genie can be put back in the bottle, and many of these sitcom...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2006 02:15 AM
Larry notes that many Western news outlets have begun referring to "the Prophet Mohammed" instead of plain old "Mohammed" in their reports. One thing is certain: it's not due to a heightened sensitivity toward all the world's religions. Otherwise, we'd...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2006 07:46 PM
My friend Beth Lisick (author of, most recently, the excellent and hilarious book Everybody into the Pool, about which I gushed here) was kind enough to mention King Dork in this poll of "what local authors are reading" in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2006 05:16 PM
Oliver Kamm writes amusingly in the Times about the responses from a handful of celebrated authors asked by Britain's Royal Society of Literature to name their top ten recommended books for children. It is true that there's something funny about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2006 03:22 PM
Ben has more taste and shame than me, apparently, because he had the decency to be embarrassed, but man Brokeback to the Future had me literally howling and shaking with laughter. Now I'm finished watching it, and I'm still shaking....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 05:55 PM
I was in San Diego earlier this week and I had lunch with my agent and Michael Cart, who is a kind of big shot in the YA world and has a genuine, truly affecting passion for these books. There...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 03:38 PM
So I'm sitting here trying to write my second novel (man, that's hard), and I've had a few drinks and I'm looking for distractions and I start reading my blog's comments, just to see, as one does. Maybe someone has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2006 02:40 AM
This may well be the funniest thing I've read all week: some folks are worried that the usual suspects (i.e. people who live outside of Manhattan and San Francisco) are suspiciously silent about their hatred and fear of the film...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2006 06:08 AM
Whatever breached security at Pine Bluff Arsenal late Tuesday night wasnt human, officials said Thursday. (via Sploid.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2006 03:23 AM
Robert Kagan, on the state of not being a Straussian: I have long admired the work of Allan Bloom, Harry Jaffa, Harvey Mansfield, and Thomas Pangle--though not, I must say, Leo Strauss himself, since I have never understood a word...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 08:55 PM
No, not me! That's Alfred Hitchock's Vertigo. Norm Geras notes this rather embarrassing (in retrospect) passage from a 1959 piece by film critic Stanley Kauffmann: The decline of Alfred Hitchcock is no longer news. It is quite clear that the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2006 02:51 AM
I have learned through experience over the years that it avails one very, very little to get in arguments with Chomskyists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Objectivists, vegans, postmodernists, Maoists, Scientologists, LaRouchies, Deadheads, Foucault dependents, and crusading atheists. (I'd add Catholics to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2006 09:43 PM
If you find the argument over whether Religion has done more harm than Science or vice versa diverting, you might want to head over to Natalie Solent's place: she's arguing with Professor Anthony Grayling. UPDATE: Hey this is almost just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2006 03:36 PM
Speaking of religion, philosophy, spirituality, atheism, contrarianism, drugs, hippies, punk rock and what have you, Larry dredges up an anecdote from a drunken ramble through Poland in the summer of '92. What he doesn't mention (and possibly doesn't know) is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 09:39 PM
Treacher's Joel Stein parody is quite funny....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 05:19 PM
The BBC plans to mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this Easter with an hour-long live procession through the streets of Manchester featuring pop stars from The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and featuring songs by The Smiths and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 04:54 PM
I just have to say how proud, stoked, chuffed, and generally pleased I am to run a weblog that can get comments that include the phrase: as a punk rocker studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood... That was in response...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2006 03:52 AM
Oops, make that: the Evils of Religion. Sorry about that. Am I alone in thinking that the question of whether or not Religion (qua religion) is "bad" or "good" is a rather frivolous one? Is Politics "good"? Or is it,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2006 05:48 PM
Congratulations also to Matt Welch, who is now an assistant opinion editor at the Los Angeles Times. Way to go, man....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 11:47 PM
According to this, Naomi Wolf has had a mystical experience in which she, as a soul inhabiting the persona of a teenaged boy, saw a "holographic image" of Jesus. Not only that, but the Sunday Herald also predicts "a theological...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 06:58 PM
Romanian-born writer Andrei Codrescu addressed the American Library Association's midwinter meeting in San Antonio, and raised the issue of the Cuban "independent librarians." (I've written about it here, here, and here: the basic story is that the ALA has pointedly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 05:08 PM
So now there's a King Dork Discography to go along with the King Dork Reading List. It's a list of some of the records listened to, commented on, or alluded to by the narrator in the course of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2006 04:31 PM
According to Kirkus, Macaulay Culkin's new "novel" manages to "lower the already low bar set for celebrity fiction," and "makes Ethan Hawke read like Philip Roth." (via Galleycat.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 08:00 PM
So I went ahead and made one of those "listmania" lists on Amazon, the King Dork Reading List. Through the course of the story, the narrator Tom Henderson reads a whole bunch of books from the fifties and sixties, including...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 02:57 AM
How in the world did I ever manage to miss this awesome Chick tract dramatizing the dangers of D & D? (via Bookshelves of Doom.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2006 02:20 AM
I finally got around to running "King Dork" through the Lulu Titlescorer: according to it, and I'd sure like to believe it, King Dork has "a 63.7% chance of being a bestselling title," which seem like pretty good odds to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2006 07:40 PM
Ages ago I came up with this sort of instruction manual for how to visit London's Tate Modern. I know most people disagree, and call me a philistine if you must, but I stand by my initial reaction: the "art"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 08:37 PM
There's a terrific interview with Paul Berman in the current New York Press. Excerpt: I regard myself as of the left, and my complaint about a great many other people on the left is that they are stuck in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2006 04:35 PM
The other day, in the midst of a flurry of emails on the general subject of James Frey, JT Leroy, identity or lack thereof, and the nature of truthiness, my editor asked: "I just want to check. Are you real?"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2006 10:44 PM
Novelist Christian Bauman considers the Frey Affair in the light of his own archive of rejection letters and makes a pretty good case that, ultimately, Dave Eggers is to blame. (via Ross at Andrew's place.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2006 04:31 PM
Want to hear something crazy? Then get someone to read this aloud to you: Random House will refund readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move believed to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2006 07:50 PM
By now I imagine most people have seen the Smoking Gun expos on James Frey and his fake memoir A Million Little Pieces. I'm enjoying it as much as everybody else, of course, particularly as it presents an occasion to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2006 06:18 PM
I honestly thought it was a joke the first three or four times I heard it, but it's for real: George Galloway has decided he can best serve his constituents by appearing as a contestant on Britain's Celebrity Big Brother...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2006 04:13 PM
In real life, it would give me nightmares, but on the internet it's just hilarious: A mother in Dallas is one of several parents complaining about a new interactive book for toddlers in which Sesame Street character Elmo asks "who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2006 08:15 PM
Neil Clark, the author of what may be my all-time favorite and most quotable piece of loopy alterna-wing journalism ("Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience") has reviewed Oliver Kamm's Anti-Totalitarianism for the Telegraph. It can be read on Clark's relatively new blog....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2006 07:42 PM
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors: In the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior. According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2005 04:06 PM
Another Bit of Berman: This Insta-linked article from Salon's Cary Tennis, offering advice on The Revolution to an academic who longs for the fulfilling days of '68 and the barricades and Foucault and the Maos and the Red Brigades and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 05:12 PM
So I finally got around to reading Paul Berman's Power and the Idealists. It reproduces his 2001 New Republic essay "The Passion of Joschka Fischer," which I have long admired, and adds to it several chapters concerning the aftermath of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2005 12:43 AM
John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on the same day. They all went to the same place. Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore. Huxley went to hell because he trusted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2005 02:49 AM
A good one from Dave Barry, via one of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents: The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2005 09:47 PM
Wil Wheaton comments on this story about HDTV, the beautiful people, and make up: When I was heavily involved in promotional appearances for things like Star Trek, I was constantly amazed by the celebrities I'd meet in green rooms. Some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2005 02:11 AM
So earlier this week I was down in L.A. recording acoustic versions of five songs that are referenced in King Dork, the book. It was at the Books on Tape headquarters in Woodland Hills, CA. (The audio version of King...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2005 03:37 AM
Kyrie O'Connor says that CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy is too politically incorrect to be made into a movie without heavy bowdlerization. She's probably right, though my recollection is that the Saracen slurs run through the other books,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 1, 2005 05:41 PM
Here's another comment that was just left on a post from long, long ago. (If I don't mention it here, chances are no one will ever see it, so I reproduce it here as a public service.) The original post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2005 03:32 AM
Bookslut's Michael Schaub says (and it's hard to disagree with him) that The War Against Toenail Fungus is "the most magical book ever written in any language." The first paragraph: You might think that since we were able to put...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2005 04:35 PM
Larry Livermore has started a blogspot blog. The first post references my recent shows in New York, plus a range of other topics, including an account of the Potatomen "reunion" that I had to miss because I was playing in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2005 12:57 AM
Kendra attended the show the other night, and one of the songs I played ("Leave the Thinking to the Smart People") took her down memory lane: My roommate freshman year hated that song. i played the hell out of it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2005 05:01 PM
Approximately two out of every three guys around here look more or less exactly like Chuck Klosterman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 30, 2005 05:25 PM
So, the word on the street is that the Kettle of Fish appearance will happen on 10/26 as originally schemed. (59 Christopher St., Greenwich Village, NYC.) It's going to start at 7 and end at 8. Also appearing: Lise Johnson,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2005 06:22 PM
So this is tax time for lazy, unorganized people like me who file extensions till the last possible moment, and my life could, at the moment, be accurately described as "receipt hell." I've got a couple of suggestions for a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 21, 2005 04:25 PM
Well, it's not actually "out" till April 11, but I just realized they're already doing advance orders of King Dork on Amazon. It has a sales rank (somewhere in the gazillions, one being the highest) so I suppose that means...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2005 06:49 PM
Michele very sweetly cites "I Don't Need You Now" as a song she wished she had written: I always wanted to be clever. Clever, as far as songwriting goes, means you have the ability to be witty and punchy while...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 14, 2005 06:36 PM
Bookslut's Michael Schaub includes King Dork in his Guide to Rock Novels. The list is pretty interesting. Who knew there were so many punk rock novels, for instance? But even though they're from Chicago and everything, somehow they missed this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 7, 2005 04:56 PM
Gawker has a good point about the NY school system's decision decision to scale back recruitment of teachers from overseas: Seriously: How will they possibly succeed in college if theyre not familiar with math classes taught by those with no...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 30, 2005 10:19 PM
Bill Quick has a new novel, a thriller called Inner Circles, which he has published as an e-book. In the original series of comments, since removed to clear up the inline comment clutter, there was some discussion over whether or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2005 10:02 PM
Longtime readers of this blog may remember Ethan Stoller, the man behind the "band" Dynamite Ham, and his longterm concept album project contrasting my songs with those of Frank Loesser, by means of quirky and imaginative covers. Well, now the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 14, 2005 07:25 PM
Damian Counsel posted this analysis of the Shouty Woman song in pop music. Some Anastacia fans discovered the post, and now they're setting him straight in the comments....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2005 11:23 PM
My friend found this on Craig's List: I don't understand why some of you women have a problem when a guy posting a pic or e-mailing you a pic of them with "NO SHIRT ON". How can you assume that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 12, 2005 04:48 PM
Number nine....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 11, 2005 06:54 AM
I spent this weekend feeling superfluous and mostly rather out of place in Los Angeles at this conference/convention for an organization with the least memorable acronym I've ever come across: the SCBWI. It stands for the Society of Children's Book...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2005 07:08 PM
Paul Morrissey on Andy Warhol: I really have to explain who Andy was, says Morrissey. He was a disabled man who was autistic, and dyslexic to a degree that he couldnt read one word. He was frightened and timid, had...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2005 05:07 PM
Cranky tips on how not to do acknowledgments, with instructive examples from Chuck Klosterman and Steve Almond. There is not one piece of the book publishing process that is not a potential well-spring of embarrassment. As with anything that is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2005 05:06 PM
So, like I said, the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart. On the same night, I'll be doing a brief set...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2005 09:33 PM
Michael Totten, who is currently engaged in the launch of a centrist group blog called Donklephant (get it?) wonders why "conservatives" seem to tolerate centrists more than "liberals" do. I don't have an answer, though the observation squares with my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 06:59 PM
Spiegel interviews the novelist Ian McEwan about London, 7/7, Iraq, and, incidentally, his novel Saturday. Excerpts: What keeps getting forgotten here is that the people committing massacres in Iraq right now belong to al-Qaida. We're witnessing a civil war that's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2005 04:48 PM
Parents Against Bad Books in Schools provides this Sample Book Review Documentation Form, which recommends this grading system: For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide: Violent Content Basic (B): cut...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2005 12:02 AM
Andrew Sullivan reviews the Schmidt Report on cruel and abusive treatment at Gitmo in some detail. It is worthwhile, though uncomfortable, reading. Whether the incidents described count as "torture" or not is a matter of definition, perhaps; but it is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2005 07:17 PM
David T. at Harry's Place links to this twisted article from Indymedia UK. I only check out Indymedia when its loopier moments are linked by someone else (as here, for example) so I'm in no position to judge whether it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2005 06:18 PM
Harvey Pekar (yes, that Harvey Pekar) reviews Chris Sorrentino's "re-imagining" of the Patty Hearst kidnapping in the Baltimore Sun. He likes it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2005 02:40 AM
My friend Beth Lisick has a new book out, Everybody into the Pool. It's a series of humorous, charmingly told, stories about her semi-alternalife, but that description, while accurate, doesn't quite suffice. There are a lot of arch daily-life humorists...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2005 05:45 PM
So the MTX is playing at Slim's in San Francisco on July 23rd with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Teenage Bottle Rockets, the Teenage Harlets, and Sabrina Stewart. On the same night, God willing, I'm going to stop by at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2005 02:41 AM
On the eve of Live 8, Prospect's David Rieff revisits Live Aid, and the vexing topic of how politics and the behavior of totalitarian regimes can complicate the ethics of even the best-intentioned relief efforts: Did the mobilisation of public...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 08:44 PM
If you can think of a better way to start the day, I'd love to hear it, but I sincerely doubt you could do better than this: Eurodisco masters Dschinghis Khan performing "The Rocking Son of Dschingis Khan" on a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 05:13 PM
The WSJ examines YA novels with "heavy themes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2005 04:55 PM
The editor of The Age thinks Douglas Wood should be more solicitous towards his kidnappers: I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood's use of the a---hole word, if I can put it like that, which I just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2005 05:43 PM
From an interview with Daniel Pinkwater: Someone once said that no book has ever been written that could not be subtitled, "How to Be More Like Me." I am conscious never to write a book that could be so subtitled....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2005 01:28 AM
Is criticism too "snarky" these days? Or is everybody too nice? Those age-old questions have been revived and batted around by a certain art-focused segment of the blogosphere recently. I think it began with Neal Pollack's New York Times account...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2005 06:01 PM
Ambulance chiefs today urged the public not to ring 999 if they felt hot and sweaty after a 25% increase in calls... Liz Howarth, the services director of corporate development said: Many people are calling with complaints that they are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 06:32 PM
Elizabeth Clementson's "Down with MFAs" guest column on MobyLives (down the left-hand side of the main page) has sparked vigorous disagreement from various MFA-holding readers, as well as a plaudit or two. It seems that many people feel that what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2005 04:44 PM
I got a kick out of this anecdote about a "live commercial" for British Airways on the tube to Heathrow: ...on the train back to Heathrow, two men stopped in my car and started talking about how one of them...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2005 03:04 PM
OK, I'm not "meme"-happy all of a sudden or anything. I feel a little embarrassed that I'm doing two in one month, but Ted Barlow "tagged" me so graciously that I feel I ought to be gracious back. Here it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2005 12:38 AM
Regular readers know that, like a lot of people, I collect "found" stuff. Usually that means written material, like letters, notes, shopping lists, that sort of thing, though it can include photos and other anomalous objects as well. Over the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2005 12:58 AM
Lucy Elmann had to get something off her chest, it seems, and a review of Francine Prose's A Changed Man was as good a forum as any: American sentimentality may once have seemed endearing, but now we know it's just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2005 04:28 PM
It is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Judy Blume's Forever, prompting this interview-article. There's an amusing anecdote about Margaret Drabble's navel-genital confusion, and some interesting observations on the state of public morality, popular culture and publishing. Like this,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2005 06:14 PM
An auction house is flogging items from Ayn Rand's personal library. The listing for Rand's copy of Mary McCarthy's The Humanist in the Bathtub includes transcriptions of several humorous marginal notes, one of which is the title of this post....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2005 12:00 AM
Remember that call for papers on "the gendered construction of public toilets"? Well Alex Beam actually interviewed the co-editor, Olga Gershenson, who sticks by her story: the project, she insists, is a "very serious project in an established field of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 11:40 PM
"This website features a series of drawings made by children who were abducted by aliens for the alien purpose of creating a new race of alien/human hybrids." NB: (a) Drawings of aliens by the children the aliens abduct; (b) Drawings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 06:44 AM
There's not much to note about this review-blurb of Robert Stone's SLA documentary other than the fact that it appears in the Socialist Worker. Because of the deadpan irony I discussed in my pseudo-review a ways back, this film has...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2005 01:58 AM
Lisa Carver reads around a dozen pieces of "chick lit" and lives to tell the tale: Have you seen this girl? She shops, talks, slogs through life, wielding her sense of humor like an itty-bitty knife. She specializes in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 03:43 PM
I don't usually like these "meme" chains, but this one appeals because of the randomness. Put your iTunes in alphabetical order by song and note the first track for each letter. Michele did it, and came up with a much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2005 04:02 AM
A former Nazi graphic designer named Borg has embarked upon an insane quest to get credit for his role in designing the VW logo: According to his lawyer, Borg presented the first draft in June 1939 before joining the German...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2005 08:59 PM
The title of the book is: Judith Christ of Nazareth: The Gospels of the Bible Corrected to Reflect that Christ was a Woman. Not only do we get a Jesusetta named Judith, but there's the Prodigal Daughter, and The Lady's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2005 03:44 PM
A lot of people were taken aback by Tom Cruise's baboon-like God's Quarterback as Care Bear with Tight Trousers performance on the Oprah show last week. ("Something happened to you... Something happened to you...") In fact, though, I find this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 06:08 PM
This appears to be an elementary school kid's homework, found in Oakland. Emerson Elimentry monday may, 23. 2005 ANDREW Spelling List 1. quit: stop doing somthing 2. quack: a duck making noise 3. quick: somthing fast 4. quiet: not making...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2005 05:32 PM
Roger Kimball reports on a call for papers on "the gendered construction of public toilets": This collection will work from the premise that public toilets, far from being banal or simply functional, are highly charged spaces, shaped by notions of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2005 03:48 PM
As time goes on, you get older. It's kind of obvious, in a way, though people spend a lot of energy trying to evade this logic. Yet even though time flows as a steady, relentless stream, you don't always notice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2005 05:27 PM
I go over to Rosie O'Donnell's blog every now and again. I'm not sure why. Maybe just to see if she's still doing it. Or maybe just to check: is she still doing the weird poetry slam format? I like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2005 04:44 PM
I'd never heard this story before: a Church of England vicar gets his book published by a for-women-only specialty division of a publishing house by managing to leave the impression that he is a young, female Muslim of Indian origin....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2005 04:18 PM
In this, this, and a great many other threads, the Democratic Underground crowd salutes George Galloway's courage, strength, and indefatigability. UPDATE: Some highlights: I am not kidding, when I heard Galloway today, I felt just like I did when I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 08:43 PM
Norman Mailer, posting on that Huffington thing, wonders whether Isikoff and Newsweek were set up by the US government as part of a Byzantine "counter-espionage" reverse public relations scheme. (I mean "Byzantine" in the figurative sense, though taking it literally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2005 05:58 PM
This "found" item is a bit hard to describe. The author is attending a conference or meeting of some kind and has made some preparatory notes on a computer-printed page. One side of the page is a print-out of a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2005 04:32 PM
Jesse Walker couldn't make it past the first sentence of this Eric Alterman column about how even if civility in public discourse is important, an exception should probably be made when it comes to Robert Novak. "Such a lede," he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 02:55 PM
A person or persons unknown (but apparently from Belgium) have been arriving at this site trying to find information about the song "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word." He, or they, weren't too clear on the title at first....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 02:14 PM
He was found soaking wet in the middle of the night, unable to speak and dressed in an expensive dinner suit. The only real clue to his identity is an astonishing talent for the piano. The 6ft musician dubbed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2005 01:34 PM
Have you seen this movie, Kingdom of Heaven? I'll admit, it's no Troy, but it's still a hoot. Kingdom of Heaven asks a question that has plagued historians for decades: what would happen if a late 20th-century, secular, agnostic, multiculturalist,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2005 03:08 AM
From the folks hosting MIT's time traveller convention, some tips on how to publicize the event so that people from the future will be able to find out about it: We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2005 05:49 PM
Here's a pretty interesting interview with crusading atheist Richard Dawkins. Like many radical materialists, he affects, for rhetorical purposes, a failure to grasp that when he discusses religious experience and matters of faith he is not talking about the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 07:26 PM
I'm sure it will be commented upon ad nauseam by folks with more energy and insight than I happen to have right now, but I did get a kick out of this article on the new "writing sample" portion of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2005 04:44 PM
Maureen Dowd phones it in from Rome, with a lazy compare-and-contrast between the Pope and Dick Cheney. This just in: "the new pope views the Roman Catholic Church as the one true religion." No way....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2005 05:52 PM
I just completed yet another step in the book publishing process: reviewing the copyedited manuscript. They print out your book, and an anonymous copyeditor goes through it and makes corrections and notes about style, continuity, grammar, discrepancies, factual accuracy, etc....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 07:39 PM
This letter, written in pencil and green ink on two stapled sheets of notepaper, appears to be a report to a schoolteacher from someone who was charged with supervising the class one day. Perhaps a substitute, a student teacher, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 05:13 PM
Every so often, someone will post a comment to a post from long, long ago. Sometimes they're just spammers hoping not to be noticed. Sometimes, these comments come from those who just googled their way in to an obscure corner...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 04:19 PM
From Johann Hari's latest piece on Galloway, Oona King and Bethnal Green and Bow: I asked Galloway how many Muslims had been murdered by his friend Aziz. The correct answer: even more than have been slaughtered by Ariel Sharon, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2005 03:30 PM
Here's a whole website dedicated to demonstrating "the futility of using Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check." I doubt that this really needed demonstrating, in fact, but for what it's worth I think we can consider it demonstrated. According to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 16, 2005 06:40 PM
In re: School reading choices could spell disaster: Has anyone ever actually loved a book he or she was forced to read in school? And is it possible to get over it after a decent interval, or do you just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2005 03:45 PM
Greg from the Talent Show says it's the funniest video ever. I'm not saying he's wrong, and he makes a good case, but "funny" just doesn't seem to cover it. If there is a place where kitsch intersects with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2005 04:46 AM
Found at La Mancha Plaza in north Oakland:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2005 09:10 PM
This is another piece from the collection of found stuff mentioned below. It is a letter, written in blue ink on eight pages of stationary from the La Posada Inn in Santa Fe New Mexico, to "William A. O." from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2005 12:05 AM
The mother of all personal ads: WHERE N THE HELL ARE THE AVERAGE LOOKING SLIM OR BIG OR CHUBBY OR THICK OR GIRLS I KNOW THERES 1 GIRL OUT THERE THAT HAS ALOT MEAT ON THE TUMMY AND A BIG...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2005 02:10 AM
This story has been making the rounds: a high school student in Chula Vista mounts a successful campaign to replace one the school's passing bells with "Slow Ride" by Foghat. "Every story sounds better with the name 'Foghat' in it,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2005 04:48 PM
Michele recently wrote a thoughtful little essay about her own sense of "buyer's remorse" with regard to her vote for Bush in the election. I imagine there are quite a few people teetering on that particular edge these days, though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2005 05:39 PM
From Craig's list NY (via Gawker): 800 pages needs to turn into 350-400 pages. HELP! Writer seeks editor with book editing experience and loads of reading knowlege and familiarity of topics pertaining to spirituality, NLP, meditation, hypnosis, and the spiritual...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2005 02:23 AM
Sheila O'Malley turned up this quote from Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng): Here's the problem with Write what you know: What too many aspiring writers know, it turns out, is that a suburban American adolescence causes vague feelings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2005 09:40 PM
I missed this last week on kausfiles. (Scroll down to "Open book/PC Hell"-- hey what's with the godfather of blogging not having permalinks to individual posts? I guess it's kind of charming, in a quaint old world way): Jada Pinkett...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2005 05:47 PM
An overheard conversation: Man: ...and at some point you've got to wonder why all of these so-called accidents are happening to Democrats, and never to Republicans. But if you ask the question publicly, they marginalize you. They say you're crazy....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2005 09:30 PM
Since December, patrons who order Jack Daniel's whiskey at Gino's, the Sellwood restaurant known for its pasta and mammoth Caesars, have been asked to try a brand with no affiliation to President Bush. (Brown-Forman, the company that distills JD, supported...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2005 03:54 PM
Ladies: how to kiss your man if he's secretly gay; or if he's about twelve; or, if you want him to run from the room screaming. via the president. (title comes from this related piece of disinformation.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2005 02:15 AM
This is another peek into the world of Jean, Irene, and Eric that I mentioned below. Sadly, Fluffles does not make an appearance in this document. It's a letter from Irene to Jean, and it is quite long. But the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2005 04:12 PM
From the Alternative Tentacles e-newsletter: A short time ago East Bay Ray faxed Jello Biafra a proposal to sell the DK's version of "Viva Las Vegas" to one of TV's all-time worst programs on TV's all-time worst network- "American Idol"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2005 05:11 PM
I guess this is Found Stuff day over here at Dr. Frank's What's-it. Today I found a hoard of wedding cards, Christmas cards, birthday cards, and other random stuff from the lives of two people named Kelly and Julie. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2005 07:42 PM
I've had occasion to comment on Neil Clark's unique brand of totalitarian nostalgia before. While I doubt he will ever again meet the standard set by his groundbreakingly perverse "Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience," I still keep rooting for him. Perhaps...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2005 03:19 PM
Long-time confidante and all-around great gal Tristin reviews the Manchurian Candidate remake, summarizing the film's "message" thus: they are mobilizing against us, fellow boomers, we must re-subscribe to the Nation RIGHT AWAY...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2005 02:04 PM
I've never been an "organic" kind of guy, even though I live in a place where everyone is always falling over themselves to be as "organic" as possible at all times. It's not that I'm hostile to the organic people....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2005 07:27 AM
Well, once again rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Still working on the book, which is occupying most of my mental energy - high volume blogging seems to work best when you don't have anything better to do,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2005 03:24 PM
Be sure to view the slide show of images from one of TV series discussed in this article about a North Korean crackdown on long hair. Excerpt: The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2005 05:49 PM
Computer-printed in huge, bold, Times New Roman, filling an entire sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper: RULES: 1 - At the end of the game, each team member will get to eat all the almonds that he or she...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2005 05:29 PM
Hugo Chavez has been awarded, and has accepted, the prestigious Gadhafi International Human Rights Prize for 2004. The award is "in appreciation of his stances." Previous International Human Rights Prize recipients include Fidel Castro and Louis Farrahkan. (via Marc Cooper,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2004 08:13 PM
I just finished reading Bill Ayers's memoir, Fugitive Days. It's a puzzling book. The first 2/3 tells a straightforward and more or less typical story of the "making" of a 60s radical consciousness (all-American privileged childhood; stint at an oppressive...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2004 06:25 PM
Continuing the theme of the previous post, I saw the Patty Hearst film yesterday (Guerilla: the Taking of Patty Hearst.) It's not really "about" Patricia Hearst, nor really even the history of the SLA, though the SLA story is sketched...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2004 03:09 PM
I just finished reading Bringing the War Home, by Jeremy Varon. It's a parallel narrative and analysis of the story of 60s-radical terrorism in the US and Germany, and it's by far the best thing on the subject that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2004 04:27 PM
Simon Hoggart reports on a recent meeting of the Impeach Tony Blair Movement, a motley crew of Conservative politicians, Lib Dem spoilers, fringe agitators, and Celebrated Artistes. Sadly, some of the most colorful characters on the list (George Galloway, Boris...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2004 03:54 PM
Clive Davis quotes the following anecdote from Richard Pipes's Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-belonger: I entered a streetcar in Leningrad and to buy a ticket took out the loose change from my pocket: mixed with Soviet coins was a Kennedy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2004 08:42 PM
More from Oliver Kamm on the Chomsky Cult. UPDATE: Here's Kamm's follow-up post, which includes some cranky correspondence from the elusive and rather excitable Michael Hardesty....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2004 03:35 PM
I enjoy Oliver Kamm's formidable attacks on Noam Chomsky as I enjoy all of his writing, not only as informative lectures, but also as tightly-constructed masterpieces of understated, withering rhetoric. Even when I don't link to them in fact, I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 07:50 PM
Here's a huge collection of anonymously-posted love letters (via metafilter.) The title of this item comes from this one....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2004 12:51 AM
I don't know quite what to make of this tale of two American Episcopal priests, married to each other, secretly "Druids," who apparently managed to slip this Mother Goddess ritual into the official Episcopal Church USA website before public exposure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 06:02 PM
Its about time we instigated a prestigious award for the first world leader to tell Bono to get lost. Here is the U2 lead singer, talking about his chat with Gerhard Schrder: Germanys bumpy economy was making Chancellor Schrder nervous...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2004 02:49 PM
I know that statistics can be manipulated to serve any ends, and I have no confidence in the universal applicability of any poll, particularly when you're talking about context-less pieces of micro-data. And having graduated from a supposedly elite university...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2004 04:43 PM
The best stories have a beginning, a middle, a violent climax, a deceptive resolution with a hint of worse to come, and finally a satisfying, ironic punchline. This one (via Richard Bennett) has it all. I can't wait for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2004 03:45 PM
1.) Check out this virtuoso three-year-old xylophonist: her beautiful expression makes this an excellent performance. (via Harry's Place.) 2.) This probably shouldn't have cracked me up quite as much as it did, but what can I say? I'm a profoundly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2004 04:38 PM
More from Robert Kagan on the US/Europe divide, with an emphasis on "the genuinely elusive and malleable concept" of legitimacy: Discovering where legitimacy lies at any given moment in history is an art, not a science reducible to the reading...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2004 02:40 PM
More on the San Francisco state of mind, written in reaction to the quote from Fat Mike in this article. Excerpt: San Francisco is an island surrounded by a bubble shaded by a giant rainbow flag sheltered by the First...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 10:45 PM
TNR's Peter Beinart notes that the Democratic Party seems unusually complacent in defeat, pointing out that post-defeat "unity" is not necessarily a virtue. He really has a point: many Democrats appear to believe that the thing to do in 2008...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2004 09:08 PM
It's true. I can go to New York and order sauted fiddle-head fern on my hamburger and no one bats an eye. And while I'm at the restaurant, where the bill will come to around half the price of an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 03:09 PM
Unless there's some kind of glitch in the translation, this bizarre article comes rather close to expressing approval of the murder of Theo van Gogh, and accuses him of "abusing his right to free speech." Why it should appear on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2004 07:05 AM
David Aaronovitch discusses the seemingly widespread notion that the 2004 election is best understood as a Philip Pullman/gnostic parable, a spiritual war where the bad guys won. (He has a slightly different notion.) Also, Harry provides some perspective on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 7, 2004 04:14 PM
Norm Geras anticipates and laments four more years of this: Had John Kerry won on Tuesday, you can be confident of one thing. This would have been widely hailed by left, liberal or progressive opinion as a triumph and vindication...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 5, 2004 06:24 PM
I was listening BBC Radio 4 over the internet this morning and I heard a report on this. At first I wondered whether it was part of a radio drama, rather than news, but it turns out it's true. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2004 06:20 PM
I wish Andrew Sullivan really did do a Van Halen Award....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2004 04:47 PM
Will Shetterly, author of Dogland, is auctioning off some slots in his new novel. Bid here for the dedication; and here if you want to be an actual character. There's also a raffle. I'm getting a vague J. Peterman/Kramer vibe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 06:58 PM
If you missed Jon Stewart's one-man assault on Crossfire, here it is. via Ken Layne. UPDATE: I can't resist pulling this out of the comments. Aaron points out the Washington Post's account: "You know what's interesting though?" Stewart shot back....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 01:04 PM
I've read a few reviews of Team America, and the reviewers all seem to be trying pretty hard to persuade themselves that the movie isn't all that funny. Well, I just saw it and here's my review: it is very,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 16, 2004 02:57 AM
My only comment on the debate: the questions were terrible. They should just eliminate the middleman and let Sally Jessy Raphael moderate next time, rather than just feeding her questions to a doddering, tooth-sucking, half-wit "newsman." Or Montel Williams. He...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 14, 2004 03:17 PM
If you live in Clark County, OH, you run a serious risk of receiving unsolicited letters from Guardian readers telling you how to vote. They're handing out names and addresses from the registration rolls. The authors of the four most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 13, 2004 03:02 PM
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About has been on my reading list for awhile now, though I haven't got round to it yet. Somehow it managed to escape me till now that the author, Guardian columnist Mil Millington,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 11, 2004 03:18 PM
So in-between the pre-game show and After Hours, there was this debate, and it was, if nothing else, great television. It was high drama, with a lot of yelling, interpersonal tension, and a twist to separate Act I from Act...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2004 07:21 PM
Like a lot of people, I've always vaguely disapproved of parents giving their kids pretentious first names. No one I've known who has been saddled with one has ever liked it much. It reflects poorly on the parents - it's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2004 06:30 PM
Item: the city of Livermore suddenly realizes that the mural-style floor mosaic they commissioned from a Miami artist for the public library misspells the names of eleven famous people, including Eistein, Van Gough, Michaelangelo, and Shakespere. Artist blames the city...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 8, 2004 03:50 PM
This long review by Paul Berman has actually bumped Philip Roth's new novel up a few spots on my "to do" list. I can't remember the last time that happened. The end seems to have been chopped off, though....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 5, 2004 12:20 AM
I haven't seen the Metallica Get in Touch with Their Feelings movie yet, but it sounds like a hoot, judging from the quotes contained in this flippant comparison of this film to the Spinal Tap one. Example: "I'm used to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 4, 2004 07:11 PM
Good column from Aaronovitch, on the debate and keeping your eye on the ball: And this takes me to what was the most worrying part of Kerry's thinking, as revealed in Miami. 'You know, the President's father did not go...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 3, 2004 05:39 PM
Harry over at Harry's Place provides an astute Brit's-eye-view of the debate, concluding: Of course American voters, who after all are who matter in all of this, have a whole range of domestic issues facing them as well and on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 2, 2004 03:21 PM
I don't feel up to attempting a full post mortem on the debate last night, but I will say I was shocked by how well Kerry came off. He didn't "win," by any means. But I had expected a train...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 1, 2004 06:40 PM
Sheila O'Malley posts a list of banned or "challenged" books, from the American Library Association's annual banned books week promotion. Of course, I am against banning books. Absolutely against it. No book should ever be banned or restricted. To any...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2004 06:31 PM
Don't miss Paul Berman's review-essay on the new Che Guevara movie....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 25, 2004 04:14 PM
Johann Hari interviews Chrisopher Hitchens. Norm Geras takes a hi-lighter to the words of Guardian columnist Jonathon Steele. A stimulating review/overview of Norman Sherry's Graham Greene biography. Cathy Seipp on the adaptability of contrarian impulses learned in early childhood. Ken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 24, 2004 04:10 PM
Like a lot of people, I really couldn't care less about the substance of the typewritergate allegations. You mean George W. Bush avoided serving in Vietnam and got help through family connections and was kind of a fuck up? No...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 05:30 PM
If you haven't happened on it already, you might want to check out Ben Weasel's lengthy interview with me. (There are supposed to be 23 installments, of which 11 have been posted so far. The first is here, and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 17, 2004 04:46 PM
1. "The US has 13,000 career sociologists, a potential for extraordinary intellectual hegemony." 2. "In absolutely negativizing disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific medical system of knowledge can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 25, 2004 03:48 PM
Lord knows, it's been done before, but this little dictionary of literary "reviewese" is pretty funny. You could compile a similar list for music "reviewese," of course, and there would be many overlapping terms. They even tend to drop some...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 18, 2004 05:51 PM
So here's some more detail on my Euro-shows next week. The Rotterdam Rumble is the big one, but the others should be fun, too. On the pop quiz thing, I'm supposed to play a medley of rock and roll/pop songs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 17, 2004 06:32 PM
I guess this kind of counts as a "found" letter. I got a wayward text message on my mobile phone today. I'm not necessarily discounting the idea that it could be a hoax by someone I know whose number I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 10, 2004 02:28 AM
So, believe it or not, I'm playing at the Waterfront in Rotterdam, Holland on Saturday, August 28th. Check it out: the Rotterdam Rumble, under the auspices of Stardumb Records. The Groovie Ghoulies are playing on the Friday, plus lots of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 27, 2004 08:58 PM
It appears that Michael Moore has been publicly slagging Pete Townshend for refusing to grant permission for the use of "Won't Get Fooled Again" in Farenheit 911. Here's Townshend's version of the story, from his online diary (i.e. blog.) He...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2004 07:52 PM
Some hilarious stuff from Ben: (a) the Wikipedia entry for Screeching Weasel, which concludes: "...their lyrics reflected [Ben] Weasel's Maoist political orientation..." I can't wait to read the MIMs review. and (b) these quotes from an interview with Bad Religion,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2004 02:45 AM
Matt Welch has a couple of great photo essays documenting his trip to Romania. Fascinating, and genuinely funny - I laughed out loud several times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2004 02:08 PM
There's another new, rationalized, politically-corrected "translation" of the New Testament floating around. It's called "Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures. I've been hearing a bit about it, and I finally stumbled on some stuff about it on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2004 06:21 PM
If you're interested in this type of thing, here's a vigorous denunciation of Michel Foucault, the evil he hath wrought, and on the wimmyn and myn who love hym. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death. When...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2004 03:31 PM
Madonna reveals why she has chosen to be a prominent celebri-spokes-mystic for the ersatz, strip-mall American Kabbala favored by many of today's most glittering socialites: "it's incredibly punk-rock."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2004 03:51 PM
I flipped through and watched a bit of all the rote, canned Reagan retrospectives that were flooding the TV yesterday. TV news was well-prepared for this; everybody had been sitting on the copy for the last ten years, waiting for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2004 05:14 PM
Somehow I stumbled on these pages of "Maoist" music and movie reviews from the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Just reading at random was good for half an hour or so of decent amusement. The primary consideration in these reviews is whether...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2004 02:48 AM
Here's a pretty good anecdote to put in your "silly school stories" file, if you've got one. A teacher is reprimanded for explaining the scriptural allusion in a line from The Merchant of Venice, and is instructed by the principal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 5, 2004 06:38 PM
Sometimes, listening to certain pop songs can actually pull me out of low-level depression. I'm not talking a vague or subtle change of mood: I mean a slight, but quite real, mental change that I can almost feel physically. There's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2004 06:54 PM
I don't know if you've noticed the spam that turns up in the comments of this and other blogs. These messages plug all the usual stuff: Viagra, Cialis, Propecia, home refinancing, Blousant, on-line casinos, penis enlargement, "gay animal sex," etc....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2004 05:06 PM
I want to believe... UPDATE: As Georgina points out in the comments, the relatively benign photo of "Tony Clifton" down towards the bottom of the pseudo-Andy blog has been replaced by some extremely gross images. Resist the urge to scroll...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2004 04:56 PM
So if you're not doing anything this evening you might want to stop by the Cafe du Nord for this: Sharing picaresque tales of love and longing are technology and sex scribe Annalee Newitz, literary agent Arielle Eckstut; comedian Kamau...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2004 04:40 PM
I haven't seen Troy yet, but if the bits described by Roger Ebert are at all representative, it should contain a great deal of unintentional comedy. And that's the best kind. Example: in the midst of what has been traditionally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2004 06:44 PM
Stephen Pollard discovers (a) that there's a Norwich Peace Council (Canaries Rule OK); and (b) Melanie Griffith's official website. (a) probably wouldn't make me giggle quite so much if I hadn't spent quite so much time in Norwich, but since...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 28, 2004 09:23 PM
If you're like me (and there's no reason to suppose many of you are to any great degree) you will find that this will, somewhat mysteriously, cheer you up just a bit....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 26, 2004 10:07 PM
From Richard Bennett's blog, I happened on this book exercise, which has generated a pretty good chain of randomness (just click back through all the vias): * Grab the nearest book. * Open the book to page 23. * Find...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2004 08:05 PM
Here's another "found" letter. It was found near the MacArthur BART parking lot. The letter is written in blue ink on both sides of a single sheet of white typing paper, folded over several times. The first page (at least)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 14, 2004 12:10 AM
As I mentioned earlier, a Holocaust Never Happened group posted the url of this weblog on the web page of their "revisionist" conference in Sacramento at the end of the month. (It all seems to stem from a single reference...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2004 12:35 AM
"A one-trick pony can be a resplendent, germane beauty..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2004 06:03 PM
Old news to most everybody, probably, but to recap: A while back, I posted the lyrics sans music to a song of mine called "She Runs Out when the Money Does." There were quite a few people out there who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2004 08:07 PM
One of the hazards of having a public web site is that you have no control over who hotlinks your url. Absolutely anyone can do it, including the most disturbing, demi-human creeps. It's entirely up to them. and there's nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2004 06:35 PM
Here are those east coast solo dates. (People who have attended this thing in the past will notice it's a much shorter list than usual-- the reasons for this are too boring to go into. It's sad that we won't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2004 04:28 PM
We're playing on Friday March 26 at the Boardwalk in Orangevale (near Sacramento) with the Groovie Ghoulies, the Helper Monkeys and the Riff Randalls. All ages. 8pm. Should be a fun night. There are also a couple of southern California...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 18, 2004 06:36 PM
I don't really know anyone from my high school anymore, but occasionally I'll get a cordial email from a former classmate who happens on my blog or band. A recent one of these mentioned the latest high school reunion, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2004 03:35 PM
Well, I did a pretty good job with regular updates for awhile there, but eventually I succumbed to the usual tour zombification process I've mentioned before. The last show of the tour proper was Monday night in Phoenix. We just...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 10, 2004 03:01 PM
This guy managed to track down the original soap ad (from a c. 1971 Look magazine) that we swiped for the cover of the album Love is Dead. The last thing I ever expected to see. Kinda cool....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 29, 2004 01:48 PM
We shouldn't have tried to drive to Greensboro last night, but it was only snowing lightly in Carborro, NC, and getting a jump start on the next day's drive is always nice when you can swing it. But we weren't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2004 08:53 AM
The last days have been thoroughly crazy. Crazy drives, crazy shows, crazy Keystone Kops routines courtesy of me and my entourage. I met the Blog of the Hurricane guy in Detroit. Cleveland rocked, just like the re-tooled song says. Rochester,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2004 02:35 PM
Ben wrote a sweet little post about the other night in Chicago. I love the final question in the penultimate paragraph. Maybe we should put it on a Tshirt or something. Ben has a lot of complimentary things to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2004 02:15 PM
We had a couple of good nights Monday and Tuesday. Monday was Minneapolis. A great city, if also a frozen, virtually uninhabitable wasteland. We stepped out of the van. Then we stepped right back in, thinking that wasn't such a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2004 03:45 PM
Alternative Press has a couple of recommendations concerning Yesterday Rules. The first is for you: buy it used. The second is for me: take some Ritalin. (I get credit for my sonic adventurishness, but it seems as though they'd prefer...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2004 03:29 PM
We still have a small backlog of MTX cover songs that people have sent in. Eventually, we'll get them all up on the site. (We just got a "We are the Future People of Tomorrow" from a guy in Germany--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2004 05:28 PM
How many times have I read The Inimitable Jeeves? A conservative estimate would be around thirty or forty times. That's the great thing about P.G. Wodehouse: you can read the entire book from page one to the end, then immediately...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2004 06:04 PM
The gods seem to have decided to do what they can to make each MTX show as "intimate" as possible. I don't know why. But they're up there on that big mountain, playing an insane game of chess upon a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2004 07:02 PM
I'm starting to understand, just a bit, why people with jobs end up blogging so often. Whether or not you have anything particular to say about whatever may or may not be going on, and whatever job you might have,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2004 05:53 PM
I don't want the last post to leave the wrong poor impression: I had a great time in Sacramento, despite the feeling of impending vocal doom. The Helper Monkeys are a great, energetic trashy rock and roll band in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2004 06:24 PM
Day one went okay, despite the title. The show was pretty fun, if chaotic. We don't have our act together yet with regard to loading, unloading, merchandise, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the monitors were quiet, which is a disheartening...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2004 05:38 PM
Well said, Ben. I remember stopping a show in the middle of a set because some refigerator-shaped goon had injured his second cute little girl (by sudden drop body slam) after being warned to cut it out. Result: prima donna...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 06:54 PM
So the tour begins. I'm going to try to blog from the road, though that can be more difficult than it sounds, as I've explained before. Starting today, though, things are going to be pretty crazy, especially in the first...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 05:10 PM
Here's the info about tonight's show in Sacramento: Saturday - 2/7/2004 Capitol Garage, Sacramento, CA 1427 L. St., Sacramento doors: 8:30, a/a with the Helper Monkeys and the Losing Streaks Give dese people air! And following is the updated show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2004 03:45 PM
Just a note to any Mac users among you: if you've been looking for a good newsreader for OSX, you need look no further than Unison. I tended to use the MT version of Newswatcher in OS9, but the OSX...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2004 03:35 PM
Steven Rubio has some kind things to say about me in this post about small-time musicians who don't know when to quit. Erm, I mean s.-t. m's who selflessly soldier on because they love the music, regardless of how permanently...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2004 05:53 PM
Just to pull something out of the comments to this item, Ben had a great answer to Dave Bug's question about how the Democratic contestants each stack up against Bush in the election for "swing voters": To put it in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 2, 2004 04:17 PM
I never know how to characterize my politics when it comes to US domestic flim-flammery. Despite the fact that I sprang from the womb a registered Democrat, and am quite likely to remain so (owing to sheer inertia as much...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2004 02:15 AM
Vaguely related to the apparently still-burning question "what is punk?", here are a few more random Yesterday Rules reviews that have somehow managed not to escape my attention: Here's one from good ol' Ed Masely from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; from...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2004 02:26 PM
Well, all this political mumbo jumbo is fine and dandy, but now back to what really matters. To wit, my own retarded attempt to publicize myself, my band, my band's new album, and my band's upcoming tour. The big show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2004 03:40 AM
My hero Paul Berman seems to have the same sort of conversations that I have. And, though he does a much, much better job of expressing himself plainly and clearly in such conversations than I have done, yet somehow mine...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2004 07:49 AM
I almost missed it, but thanks to commenter Ted, I didn't. Check out Heather King, Joe's sister, talking about going to see the Queers on NPR's All Things Considered. It's great in so many ways, not least because, well, "I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2004 06:45 AM
Nat Hentoff continues to hammer away at Castro's most recent crackdown on dissidents. This piece is about the 10 "independent librarians" among the Cuban dissidents, who were sentenced to 20+ years in the gulag for circulating subversive literature like 1984...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2004 11:20 PM
Favorite bit from the latest in the SF Chronicle's popular Bush = Hitler series: While the German concentration camps were being built and Jews were being persecuted, in 1936 Nazi Germany hosted the Olympic Games and put its best face...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 27, 2004 05:25 PM
Matt Welch is right that it would best serve the interests of the Democratic Party and the country as a whole if at least one more of the joke candidates were to drop out now. (So that "the overall wacko...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2004 04:26 PM
The Centre for Research in Modern Philosophy is hosting a conference on Noise Theory. Not intentionally a joke, we must assume. What, you ask, is "noise theory"? Beats me. You'll have to attend NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 to find out. If you're in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2004 03:49 AM
If you're weird in just the right way, you'll enjoy this massive list of palindromes from Jim Kalb. (via George Wallace.) I read each one, enjoyed them all thoroughly, even all the NASA-based ones. There were even a few good...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2004 07:52 PM
I suppose it's impossible to do long strings of interviews as a musician and avoid coming off like a big dummy sometimes. At least, it seems to be impossible for me. Is that really me in there, claiming to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2004 04:20 AM
Maybe I'm the last to know about this, as about so many other things, but up until a few minutes ago I was totally unaware that Bob Mould has a blog. Really....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2004 10:42 PM
Here's some updated information on the upcoming MTX shows. Besides filling in some details, there are two major changes/additions: --we've added a show in Sacramento on 2/7, Capitol Garage --the 3/3 show has been moved to Fitzgerald's in Houston, TX...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2004 03:12 PM
Hey, thanks Michele! So I'm going to be doing another radio interview/acoustic song thing today on KUSF at around 2pm. (With Carolyn; 90.3FM; 2PM. Live performance, interview. Broadcast live on the internet at: kusf.org.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2004 04:13 PM
It's the official Release Day, and Ken Layne has commemorated it by posting a real sweet review of Yesterday Rules on blogcritcs.org. God love him. Ken also informs me that it's also supposed to go on Cleveland.com, for some reason....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2004 05:28 PM
I've never quite got around to mentioning the MTX website. Ted just revamped it to reflect the new album and all, and it looks pretty great. We've never been very good at the whole band website thing. That is, we...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2004 04:45 PM
So last night I was on Live 105 FM with Aaron Axelsen. We did an interview, or rather, he asked me questions and I babbled some semi-coherent non-sequiturs as though in response. It was like one of those Democratic debates...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2004 03:48 PM
I'm not sure, but this, by one DJ Pusspuss from the San Francisco gay magazine SF Spectrum, may be the first published blurb/review of Yesterday Rules. It's the first one I've seen, anyway. And here's the second. College-rock tones, dude....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2004 11:52 PM
Well, here's some band/album release info. for a change. Updated tour info. follows at the end. I'm going to be a guest on the Aaron Axelson "Soundcheck" show on Live 105/KITS on Sunday night. (105.3 FM, January 11.) The show...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2004 05:24 PM
I lost track of how I arrived at the link (sorry), nor do I know how long its current form will last, but this is pretty weird....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2004 06:09 AM
A good column from Jonah Goldberg on the ubiquitous Bush = Hitler topos. Of course, this comparison reflects poor judgment and willful (we must assume) ignorance of history; and propagating it is of questionable merit as a political strategy on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2004 07:43 PM
So there's this Mazda commercial that invokes the age-old Twins Fantasy. (Two slick beautiful cars you will never be able to afford, but imagine how it would be if you could: they would be kind of the same, yet different,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2004 04:27 PM
Surrounded by upturned chairs and an abandoned turban, Sabah Al-Kaisey surveyed his ransacked office yesterday. The American troops who burst into his mosque on Thursday morning had smashed down the front gate, broken the air conditioners and ripped up the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2004 07:34 PM
This happened during the Christmas lull, so I missed it till now. Revolutionary Cells member, Baader-Meinhof associate, and convicted terrorist/murderer Hans-Joachim Klein, whose controversial 2001 trial served as the framing device for Paul Berman's brilliant essay "The Passion of Joschka...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2003 01:22 AM
The Philosophical Cowboy (whose blog I should really be checking out more often) quotes this passage (via Tim Oren, via Kevin Kelly) from a book on "artmaking": The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2003 02:23 AM
If you haven't checked out Jonathon "I Hate Bush" Chait's Dean-o-phobe blog, you probably should. I appreciate the unusual combination of apoplexy and articulateness, which continues to develop as time goes on. But here's a more temperate quote from early...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 26, 2003 08:27 PM
Tony Blair will seek to use the diplomatic breakthrough with Libya to secure similar concessions on weapons of mass destruction from Iran and Syria. Ministers believe that his New Year offensive will restore his fortunes. Secret "back channel" talks, which...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2003 05:27 PM
The formidable Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings has an interesting article in the American Spectator, asking whether a Democratic administration really would have the ability or the inclination to "fix Iraq better" than the Republicans, as all the credible candidates...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2003 05:14 PM
Norm Geras presents two conversations about Israel and Jews that will probably be familiar to any American who has spent any time in London. I've heard them, practically verbatim, dozens of times....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2003 06:30 PM
Thanks for all the song requests: it looks like the clear favorite is "I Believe in You," so consider it done. It's at least theoretically possible that we can do most of the others, too. One tip in advance: the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2003 06:01 PM
Several bizarre tidbits in this account of Saddam Hussein's presumably final novel in today's Telegraph: Saddam Hussein spent the final weeks before the war writing a novel predicting that he would lead an underground resistance movement to victory over the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2003 05:42 PM
...I love you in real life, not just in this song that's coming out of me you fall around me in a perfect harmony, so meant to be... ...I know I've seen you somewhere in eternity or paradise, a flower...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2003 07:48 PM
Yeah, so I let this blog go dark again for a little while there. It's not so much that I've been that much busier than I've been during many of those times when I have been able to keep up...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2003 04:01 PM
I'm with Jackie and Natalie: say what you want about Donald Rumsfeld, his statement about "known unknowns" is quite plain, and perfectly comprehensible. What's confusing is how an organization that calls itself the Plain English Campaign can have failed to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2003 06:02 PM
Harry's Place rocks: there has been a slew of great posts with interesting comments threads over the last couple of days. Rather than link to each of them and say "indeed," I'll just recommend starting from the top and working...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2003 03:18 AM
Someone recently left this comment on Stephen Pollard's blog: I went out with Harold Pinter's niece in 1960. Hackney Young Socialists. Nice, romantic girl. If only these were orange groves she said, staring at the street lights in Clapton High...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2003 06:10 PM
British Spin has an amusing riff on British anti-Bushism as a matter of manner and style: A clarification here, the vaunted sense of British fair play means fair play just for the British. When ruling the world, we were entirely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2003 05:56 PM
I'm not sure why, but there has been a sudden spike in "eight little songs" orders. This blog has been getting an unusual number of referrals from live journal urls lately as well, which seems to have something to do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2003 12:39 AM
David Pryce-Jones is a gifted writer and historian, and smart as a whip, yet somehow he managed rather spectacularly to get the wrong idea on the definition of the verb "to fisk," as it is used in the "www arena."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2003 07:48 PM
Speaking of Gore Vidal, pieces of this article on the history of anti-Americanism and on our own contemporary celibri-crackpots keep coming to mind. It's by Ian Buruma, and it was linked all over the place a couple of months ago,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 13, 2003 06:46 PM
Norman Geras points out this post on Butterflies and Wheels, which serves up a few fingers of some high grade, top shelf academic gibberish from a recent essay by frequent Dutton Prize honoree Robyn Wiegman. This bit is about Forrest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 6, 2003 07:14 AM
Lookout Records has posted an mp3 from the upcoming MTX album. It's called "She's not a Flower," it's track #1, and it's downloadable here. It's sort of funny how I learned of the fact that the mp3 was up. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 3, 2003 04:05 AM
Much to disagree with in this column by Mary Ridell, perhaps, though not its thesis ("retreat is not an option".) I'll just quote a few of the good lines: Peace is slippery to define. To Samuel Johnson, it was the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2003 06:00 PM
A complex, powerful and challenging exploration of the roots and meaning of the erstwhile and continuing varieties of antisemitism by Natan Sharansky. Excerpt: As for Western Europe, there the reputation of Israel and of the Jews has undergone a number...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 2, 2003 04:49 PM
A German politician uses an ugly, repellent analogy to argue against collective German Holocaust guilt, saying that blaming the "German race" for Auschwitz is like blaming the Jews for the Russian revolution. "One could describe Jews with some justification as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 31, 2003 03:38 PM
"The real threat to Iraqis is coming now from Western defeatists," writes Johann Hari, challenging the reliably defeatist writers of letters to the Independent to "dare" to claim that Iraq's Marsh Arabs would be better off now if Saddam Hussein...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 29, 2003 05:33 PM
My first and continuing inclination regarding the Gregg Easterbrook antisemitism flap was and has been not to touch it with a barge pole. I will say, though, that Steven Weiss of Jewsweek has the best treatment of the subject I've...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 27, 2003 05:45 PM
It's a long-standing tradition for songwriters to snatch titles from novels-- "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" are the most famous examples I can think of now. You don't necessarily have to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 25, 2003 05:40 PM
Ben tells a typical tale of song licensing sleight of hand, with a rather atypical happy ending....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2003 05:42 PM
Eccentric British journalist and tireless defender of totalitarianism Neil Clark returns with another weird column in the Guardian, on the "neo-con induced Arabophobia" which he affects to believe is driving Anglo-American Middle East policy. It is of a piece with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 24, 2003 12:29 AM
Good news for "song poem" people: a Song Poem Christmas album from Bar None. There are a couple of sample mp3s on the promo page, as usual. "The New Year Song" is pretty great, if you enjoy the sound of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 22, 2003 10:33 PM
One of these days I'll have a free moment and enough presence of mind to write a little something about the whole mini-tour. In brief: some of the shows may have been a bit more "intimate" than we might have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 18, 2003 07:59 PM
I'm not entirely persuaded that it isn't a "troll" or a joke or something, but nevertheless, this post from the Democratic Underground forum cracks me up: In order to win we must understand the way the average American thinks. I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 10, 2003 10:34 PM
Did you know that Sheila Kuehl, uber-feminist, Santa Monica state senator, and now freshly-embittered Schwarzenegger antagonist, is the Sheila James who played Zelda on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis? I didn't, till Richard Bennett mentioned it, but then I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 9, 2003 10:33 PM
Todd A., whose Popshot.net zine morphed into Americanzine.net while I wasn't looking, is doing some major cyberbusking: thirty songs in thirty days. Apparently written day by day and from the looks of things mostly inspired by various hot girls he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on October 7, 2003 06:11 PM
Has anyone ever been totally happy with his own album? Can anyone ever be totally happy with anything? I think the answer to both questions is probably no, though a good friend of mine, arguing to the contrary, recently alluded...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 29, 2003 02:55 PM
From Friedman's column on French perfidy: What is so amazing to me about the French campaign - "Operation America Must Fail" - is that France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France. Let me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 18, 2003 05:21 PM
In keeping with the notion of trying to stimulate discussion and interest by letting bits and bobs of the album and album related stuff slip out gradually, and since I mentioned it below as a thematic touchstone, I'm posting the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 15, 2003 04:24 PM
Harry Hatchet provides some interesting, insightful commentary on the newly complicated intellectual, moral, and emotional world that confronts Leftists/"Internationalists" in the post-Cold War era. The springboard is this article by Roger Burbach, which casts post-9/11 US policy as a failure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2003 08:24 PM
The album, so far, sounds Really Nice. Still working like crazy on finishing it up, of course, but it's looking good. We'll have a few more "all-nighters," and probably bash away at it right up till the last second before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 11, 2003 03:08 PM
So I'm back in the USA, with a touch of jet lag, a still-unfinished album and a sheaf of obsessive compulsive notes (as I explained earlier.) We're really going to have to get cracking finishing it all up-- we've essentially...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2003 02:50 PM
I've written a bit here and there and now and then in this blog about the glories of rural Norfolk's scenery, though I suppose I really mean "atmosphere" rather than scenery per se. That is, it's not so much the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 8, 2003 01:34 PM
Matt Welch has a great article on the role of blogging as an alternative alternative in the Columbia Journalism Review. It goes without saying, really, that the reason I noticed it is because it contains a link to this blog,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 4, 2003 10:18 AM
One of the nice things about visiting England is that I usually get to see my friend Chris. I know him through my wife, who knew him when they were growing up in Norwich; he has London roots, however, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on September 2, 2003 06:22 PM
On the general theory that it is as well to know which tunes the devil is playing, I usually pick up a copy of the New Statesman each time I visit England. (I used to read it more often on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 31, 2003 11:05 AM
The other day, two five-year-old boys were sitting on stone steps near the Russell Square park. I didn't catch what they were talking about, but I did hear one of them demand, with feeling and in that fuzzy, Damien Omen...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 29, 2003 02:19 PM
The original plan had been to have final mixes for every song by the end of last week, reserving one day before mastering to fix little things after having mulled it over. That would have involved a solid week of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 28, 2003 07:46 PM
Hey, I really appreciate the latest wave of "eight little songs" orders. (I guess it was spurred by the Lookout site and maybe a bit by the Lileks link.) I'm going to mail out all orders I receive through the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 22, 2003 03:40 PM
This is probably the strangest time in the gestation period of an album: where the tracking trail-off elides into the initial technical, set-up part of the mixing. Usually, I'm there for every single, tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing second (which I vaguely...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 19, 2003 05:08 PM
Richard Bennett clearly and ably explains the basics of the various "machines" in California politics. He's dead right here: The Repubs can either use this election to reincarnate their party into relevance, or to finish it off altogether. If the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 16, 2003 05:22 PM
Kevin and I changing the things we can change, accepting the things we can't, etc.: All the amp talk has alarmed at least one correspondent, who is a bit concerned that the guitar sound is going to be "all Alcatrazed-out."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 15, 2003 07:16 PM
I'm still intending, as I mentioned before, to write a little essay on the bizarre superstitious habits and tics singers use to so as to avoid jinxing the vocal recording process. I've never met a singer who isn't at least...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 15, 2003 06:29 PM
Here's a whole website devoted to the anti-modulation cause. What, you didn't know there was an anti-modulation movement? Neither did I. In case you don't know, a modulation in a pop song arrangement is where the song changes key at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2003 05:32 PM
I'm a little dazed from the journey through the fires of hell (i.e., Arizona.) Don't get me wrong: I had a nice time in hell (Arizona.) Hell (Arizona) is beautiful, with many very sweet people. But the fires of hell...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 13, 2003 04:07 PM
So I have this song called "Oh, just have some faith in me." We've been playing it (trying to play it) for the last couple of years, but could never really get it right at the practices. We tried it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 9, 2003 05:54 PM
Spaceland, the club we played last night, is located down the road from Matt Welch's house, so I had a chance to hang out with Matt and his wife, the lovely and talented Emanuelle (whom I had never met in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 8, 2003 07:00 PM
I'm planning to post some more recording updates and comments on this or that aspect of the recording process (including the bittersweet feeling of having finished the tracking, while the character of the end product nonetheless remains largely unwritten/unmixed and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 7, 2003 12:07 AM
Oliver Kamm has a couple of good posts (here and here) on the Baader-Meinhof Gang/Red Army Fraction. They were provoked by a post from that Beatnik Salad guy from Manchester, who somehow managed to come away from the recent Channel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 6, 2003 08:26 PM
Yesterday was back-up vocal day, though we did a few keyboard tracks and some percussion overdubs in the midst of everything. In many ways, the back-ups are the most frustrating part of the whole recording experience. My vocal arrangements can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 4, 2003 06:10 PM
As I feared, I lost a bit of momentum on the day off. That is, yesterday there was an abatement of the mania which tends to take hold when you're recording, and which is absolutely necessary for doing your best...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 3, 2003 04:16 PM
I tried to practice and work out some of my keyboard parts yesterday, but I was in crash mode and really couldn't concentrate. I knew the thing to do was relax, but I couldn't figure out how. So I did...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2003 05:24 PM
Because of circumstances beyond our control, we had to take yesterday off. Everyone needed a rest. I sure did. I believe I've started to crash a bit, and my main worry now is that I may be unable to rev...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2003 03:54 PM
Here I am during that first vocal session: The sunglasses were laying around at the studio and I started wearing them to amuse people, as you do. I said "whose are these?" and Mark Keaton said "they're yours now," adding...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 06:04 PM
We had three things on the agenda yesterday: acoustic guitars, e-bows, and finishing out the lead vocals. Sharkbite has really nice Taylor acoustic (probably the best-sounding acoustic guitar I've ever held in my hands) but for some reason we could...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 1, 2003 05:13 PM
I can usually tell what's going on in these studio pictures from the shirt I'm wearing, but I honestly can't tell by looking at it whether this was taken during my retarded monkey episode or not....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2003 05:33 PM
Lookout Records has put up a page devoted to the new album. So far all it has is some links, the photos I've already posted here, and the XML feed from this blog. (There's a link and summary for each...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 31, 2003 05:03 PM
Hmm, how to characterize yesterday's session? As usual, Ted played some great, great, brilliant guitar on several tracks with seeming effortlessness. Then we started to examine the song "Sorry for Freaking Out on the Phone Last Night." That was one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 30, 2003 07:54 PM
The tuning demon seems to have left the building. Yesterday was extremely productive, and we ended up with the basic guitars on all but one song. Towards the end of the night I did some scratch vocals. These are for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2003 05:27 PM
Yesterday's recording session was a bit off-kilter because everyone was still a little wrecked from the previous night's show. We got a lot accomplished, nonetheless, finally finishing all the bass, putting down the sketchy basics of some of the sound...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2003 05:45 PM
I was going to do some blogging today, but a massive Lookout Party aftermath headache has made even the sound of the keys a bit too much for me poor little head. I better get over it fast, though-- tonight...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2003 11:16 PM
Here I am with Jym listening to the playback of a drum track-- I think it was "She's not a Flower." " To my amazement, we actually managed to finish all the drum tracks today. Some of it still needs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 25, 2003 10:15 AM
Here's the MTX bass player, Bobby J. I think he'd just done the bass track for "Oh, just have some faith in me." Was it rockin', aggressive, innocent yet jejeune with a soulful been-around-the-block, Slade-o-centric joie de vivre, an oddly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2003 05:21 PM
We got a lot done during the second day of tracking, though it didn't feel like that was what was happening while it was happening. Trying to judge sounds and weigh the merits of the performance of parts that are,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2003 04:58 PM
Most recording studios I've worked at have some kind of "vintage" board that was acquired from somewhere else, some other studio that either replaced it or went out of business. (And of course, older is better in perception and reality:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2003 04:41 PM
Is Bush a conservative? Of course not, in many ways. Andrew Sullivan spells them out in this article with the sub-hed "the liberal within". Beginning thus: it may sound like a stupid question but the dizzying mix of policies that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2003 04:19 PM
The Philosophical Cowboy links to this article on that cockamamie "brights" nonsense. If you don't know about it, you're probably better off, but Moira Breen, Natalie Solent, and countless others have written on it, if you're interested. In brief, "bright"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 01:17 AM
Let the cheap jokes begin. I know this is a serious matter ("Bomb ingredients seized at house of MILF rebel") but man, is that ever an unfortunate acronym for an Islamic terror organization. (via Inoperable Terran.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 21, 2003 12:16 AM
Dean Esmay was feeling a bit testy on his birthday (many happy returns, sir, by the way.) Testy, perhaps, but still sharp: The other day, I quoted a phrase I'd seen floating around a bunch of places online. It turned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 07:16 PM
Here's a kind little review of "eight little songs". We're going in to the studio on Tuesday, and as always, I can't quite tell the excitement from the dread. Most of the first day will probably be devoted to setting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2003 04:12 PM
Here's another nice essay by Oliver Kamm, continuing the eccentric "leftists for Bush" theme. He cites three statements by leftish Bush-Blair antagonists and opponents of intervention (Noam Chomsky, Gerhard Schroeder, and a humble UK blogger) noting how each fits "neatly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2003 05:49 PM
Moira Breen gets all the best comments: Ecto-genesis shall manumit masculine males and sexuality from womanacles (i.e. accusatrices + dominatrices + genetrices + votaries of Artemis or the Erinyes or Hecate or Hera or Themis or the X-tian God-dess et.al....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 10:58 PM
Great thinkers of our time-- Noam Chomsky. (Link requires subscription or pay-per-view, if you really want to...) That's presumably not a joke, but rather a featured story in the New Statesman by a celebrated Slobodan Milosevic apologist. He sent me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 10:43 PM
Tony Blair's popularity in Britain may have taken a bit of a hit because of the war, but my mother-in-law over there still always refers to him as "our Tony." Over here, my wife and I call him that as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 18, 2003 03:34 PM
I'm pretty much with Bill Quick on this: If we weren't at war, and I weren't certain that GWB will do a far better job of waging it than any Democrat, I'd vote against him for the rest of my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2003 07:18 PM
Somehow I managed to miss Harry Hatchet's nice little piece on the blogging experience in the Guardian. Till now, I mean. Cool. I think most people who have given this whole blogging deal a shot would agree with this: When...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 17, 2003 04:00 PM
Dave Bug has a really terrific idea that I've never seen proposed before: I'd like a database of all Billboard Top 40 songs since 1950 or so. I'd like the records in that database to list the rhyme scheme pattern,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 15, 2003 10:29 PM
There have been some great observations about marketing, gimmickry, artwork, "value-added" material, recording budgets, the value of songs, etc., etc. from Layne and Ben along with many of the usual crew of commenters in the comments to the post below....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 14, 2003 05:50 PM
It's pretty clear to me that people who make this sort of anti-copyright argument have never been within sneering distance of an actual recording budget. At least, that's what I always think when I hear people toss out phrases like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2003 07:48 PM
This blog began life as an unapologetic warblog, but, like so many things, it has had a will of its own and has refused to remain focused. (I've tried to improve that faulty attention span of mine, to no avail.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2003 09:33 PM
Pieter K., an electronic music writer/producer, has some interesting comments on the songwriter/audience issue I brought up in the post about Bob Mould and Kevin Army. (Coincidentally, he inhabited the same mid-eighties MRR pre-Gilman milieu from which Kevin and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2003 04:22 PM
Ken Layne's taking pre-orders for his home-made CD. I've been listening to mp3s of much of this stuff for the last couple of months. The material has become embedded in my brain. Now it's your turn. The best songwriters aren't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2003 07:50 PM
Oliver Kamm writes of the trend among British journalists to use the term "neoconservative" as a "pretentious synonym" for conservative. He's right, as so often, and the article he cites as an illustration of this is indeed an illustration of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2003 04:51 PM
Ben Weasel gives Norman Mailer ("some old guy from New York who has written a lot of really long books") a good, well-deserved, entirely fair dressing down for poor writing. To illustrate, Ben pulls out two undeniably awkward, amateurish, pretentious,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 8, 2003 09:41 PM
Jonah Goldberg has as low an opinion of Gray Davis as I do, and as practically every other Californian does, but he has the right idea on this recall business: it's my sincere belief that American democracy and republicanism will...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2003 09:24 PM
I just stumbled upon the story of John Bonnell, an English composition professor whose off-color vocabulary and unorthodox teaching methods have continually landed him in hot water with his college. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the case, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 7, 2003 03:57 PM
I saw Bob Mould at the Great American Music Hall the other night. I don't get out much, and even though I dearly love BM's music and have found delight and inspiration every time I've seen him play, I don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 5, 2003 08:55 PM
Noting that we share an enjoyment of goofy campus censorship stories, esteemed comrade Aaron forwards this example. It's a pretty good one. The facts are these: one Steve Hinkle, a Cal Poly student and member of the College Republicans, attempted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 4, 2003 01:43 AM
For anyone who has been following the Dissident Frogman's Missing Flags Saga, here's the Frogman's final word. Explanations, and apologies galore. His trouble has dissipated....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 05:25 PM
Here's a run down and summary of the recent controversy between Israel and the BBC, and of the case of Amit Duvshani, the Israeli graduate student whose application to an Oxford Ph.D. program was rejected by Professor Andrew Wilkie on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 03:40 PM
I never had a comments routine on my blog before I switched over to Movable Type a couple of weeks ago. Even though I thought they were kind of cool, and part of me envied those who had them, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2003 03:20 AM
Rick Heller, who runs one of my favorite blogs, Smart Genes, noted my post on ideological de-linking. He often manages to distill into one or two sentences things that I'll fumble with for page after rambling page, and here he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2003 02:03 PM
The Dissident Frogman discovers French anti-Americanism at its most inappropriate, at the Muse Mmorial de la Bataille de Normandie. According to his eyewitness account, all American flags appear to have been purged from the premises. He includes photos of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 11:55 PM
P. J. O'Rourke reviews Hillary's book in the Weekly Standard, and as always, he's got more good lines than the Navy's got marines. Here's an excerpt from the initial section on how "a mere ream of paper could not contain...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 09:00 PM
I'm sure this will get a lot of blogospheric play, and get run into the blogospheric ground in pretty short order, but it's still new enough to be funny to me. According to the Associated Press, Dennis Kucinich has promised...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 08:17 PM
Matt Welch's recent column on immigration was not particularly provocative, mostly factual, and like all of Matt's writing focused more on raising interesting questions than upon advancing a pre-determined ideological conclusion. There was the barest smidgeon of waving a red...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 04:24 PM
Liberty Punk's Geoff points to this massive comment thread at over at Right Thinking. If you want to see some of the goofier music piracy apologists in action, you can find them there. (Ben Weasel and our Matt from Vegas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2003 03:20 PM
So I don't know if anyone has noticed but I've been slowly working up to changing the appearance of the blog, bit by bit. When I first moved from blogger to Movable Type (thanks again Michele!) I used the pre-packaged,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 09:12 PM
Ben has a follow-up post to his original essay on copyrights, internet theft, etc., where he summarizes and answers the arguments of some of the comments it provoked. Well-worth a look. Photodude's recent post on this sparked a cranky comment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 07:42 PM
First off, this post has a warning label: Cigarettes are called "fags" in England. It seems only prudent to mention that, for the benefit of those who might not realize it. Slang can cause confusion. The first time you overhear...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 29, 2003 04:36 PM
Michele has landed herself in the middle of another de-linking fix, this time owing to some rather less than adulatory comments about Strom Thurmond. I, like many others, first discovered Michele's blog via an InstaPundit post about the last round...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2003 07:02 PM
Maybe I haven't managed to take over too much of the world, or make anything like a dent in America's collective media consciousness or popular culture, but things seem to be going pretty well in Fairfield County, CT. Thanks, Mike!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 07:55 PM
As InstaPundit says, this is an interesting take on the whole file-sharing dilemma: For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2003 01:47 AM
I'm just trying to imagine Italian TV without sexy. Er, sexist. Uh, ism. Or a cold and uninviting Sun, where page four directly follows page two. Or what our television world (face it, the only world you really care about)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 11:09 PM
Harry Hatchet throws clear, cold water on Ted Rall's latest lump of hyperbolic Third Reich-invoking gibberish. (Bush's Willing Executioners! Shame on you, Mr. Rall.) Rall, of course, is only one of many purveyors of myriad versions of this absurd exercise....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 07:27 PM
Upcoming shows: Lookout Records is putting on some shows to mark its 15th anniversary, July 25th - 27th. (15? No way. Yes way.) I'm playing solo on Friday, July 25th at the "Launch Party" at thee Parkside Lounge in San...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2003 05:03 PM
Looking for info. about John Trubee, I stumbled on to The American Song-Poem Music Archives, an entire site devoted to the "song-poem" genre. There's a full explanation on the site, but in brief, what they call "song-poems" are what results...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 25, 2003 05:58 PM
Ben has posted a very sweet review of "eight little songs." I'm blushing....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2003 07:04 AM
As always, I'm late to the party, but I just learned from Jim Henley that the New Criterion now has a blog. He thinks it's "just wrong." Maybe. But if so, it's wrong in a pretty engaging way. Anyway, wrong...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 23, 2003 04:55 PM
Tim Blair catches Robert Fisk, ordinarily protected these days from blogospheric/cheapskate scrutiny by what Tim calls a "cash firewall", in the act of invoking the Wolfowitz "swimming in oil" quote that caused the Guardian so many headaches, and required a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2003 08:46 AM
The great Johann Hari weighs in on the Iran democracy movement, and the strange disinclination of many on the left to muster much enthusiasm for it: The students of Iran are trying to foment a second Iranian revolution - one...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 03:43 PM
We just watched the "Criterion Collection" DVD of Straw Dogs (which has long been one of my favorite films, though I hadn't seen it in quite awhile.) I gotta say, the commentary by film critic Stephen Prince (author of Savage...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 21, 2003 03:18 PM
Pretty much, anyway. Here's Ben's promised, fiery (and terrific) essay on how the the "totally free music" conceit and internet theft impacts The Little Guy. I wrote a bit about this last year (and received tons of abuse for it--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 09:31 PM
Oliver Kamm previously noted the use of the pernicious Wolfowitz "it's all about the oil" hoax quote in an anti-war bulk email called "Were we lied to?" Now he's been phoning up the activist group's Management Committee, demanding that the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 04:01 PM
When I first read about the jolly "gas chamber hiss" heard from Chelsea supporters (and others-- one commenter says he heard it from Arsenal as well) I thought: you know, that sounds familiar. I've never actually been to an English...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2003 02:25 AM
Herewith, some further chuckles from Amazon World's Amazon.com reviews digest: "yes, i am a woman. yes, i was born a lover of poesy, water, and the small heartbreaks that consume our lives..." "Fahrenheit 451 is the worst book I have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2003 10:30 AM
Even though I have to admit I'd get a kick out of having my state governed by Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and while I'm as disgusted with Gray Davis as anyone, I'm with Deborah Saunders on this recall business. As Saunders points...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2003 09:39 PM
I was wondering why the downloads of "democracy, whisky, sexy" spiked a bit over the last couple of days, as did orders for "eight little songs". Here's why: Glenn Reynolds included those links in this MSNBC entry about the power...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 05:19 PM
Ladies and gentlemen: I am no longer the most famous punk rock affiliated blogger. That would be the illustrious Ben Weasel, whose new, just-started blog, Weasel Manor, is here. He originally told me his idea was to "share his musings...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 04:46 PM
OK, so sometimes anti-Semitism is hard to pin down, and even when it's pretty clear that there is some sort of anti-Semitic phenomenon at work, it's complex and subtle, difficult to characterize and understand how it functions and to what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 10:22 AM
Deliberately mispronouncing someone's name, or pretending you don't remember it, is a time-honored method of casting aspersions or belittling someone. Every girlfriend I've ever had has had snide little nicknames for all of the previous girlfriends she's known about, often...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2003 09:25 AM
Ben left a note in the comments to my last posted "found" letter alerting me to this excellent e-zine devoted to found items. (Open Letters was another great one its day, but sadly the online site where you could download...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2003 01:25 AM
It's a bit "last week" and all that, but I've been thinking about this Christopher Hitchens column ever since I first saw the link in a distant, long since archived InstaPundit post. Hitchens notes yet another possible angle to the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2003 09:51 PM
This interesting, amusing and fairly innocuous article by Jeet Heer about the Trostkyist past of many advocates of the war in Iraq sparked this histrionic tirade from Arnold Beichman. Granted, the headline of the original article was provocative ("Trotsky's Ghost...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 15, 2003 05:57 PM
I found this letter many years ago near the Andronicos on Telegraph and Carlton in Berkeley. It's written in black ballpoint on what was once heavy off-white paper, but it had been folded and re-folded over and over. Dear Fred,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2003 03:50 AM
So thanks to Michele (and through the good offices of Dean Esmay) I have this slick, new Moveable Type blog instead that rickety, sputtering, retarded, unwieldy blogger/blogspot blog. It's just like living in space. In fact, it's so space-age and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2003 12:57 AM
One of the two blogger-proprietors of the Atrios-endorsed Tom DeLay-hating, Krugman-boosting, Stinging Nettle is named "DrFrankLives." The blogosphere is a big tent, and there's room for multiple Dr. Franks, I guess, even if one of them has a tendency to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2003 11:01 AM
Apparently the Florida woman who insisted upon her right to remain veiled in her drivers' license photo might have had good reasons other than modesty, religious fervor, and civil libertarian concern for wishing to remain in disguise: Following her 1997...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 12:17 PM
I don't know if you've been following the whole Tucker Max/Miss Vermont shebang (so to speak.) I followed the links when I first saw them on InstaPundit, was amused-charmed-aghast-bewildered-nauseated-and-giggling like everyone else, but also at a loss for words. Ken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 09:12 AM
Angelo Codevilla's critiques of the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror have been the clearest and (to me) most interesting and persuasive of all the post-911 commentary. Here's his latest, "When the Cheering Stops": In a nutshell: President...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2003 08:46 AM
Geoff over at Liberty Punk stumbled on this discussion board: GOPunk.com. (Not Go Punk!, you understand. GOP + Punk.) From the GOPunk FAQ: Let's make one thing clear: today's Democratic Party is a vile socialist organization, thriving on hate, fear,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 03:19 PM
I still prefer Alistair Matthew Engel is leaving America, aiming one last trademark, supercilious kick at the "cybermorons" who have criticized him for cluelessness about his ostensible area of expertise. As he has discovered, Americans are a funny, inscrutable bunch:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 09:41 AM
David Aaronovitch comments on the latest survey on What Women Want (ostensible result: ersatz soft-focus romancin' with an assortment of film and tv characters.) Quite properly pronouncing it to be "nonsense," he produces his own list, based on "several decades...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2003 08:45 AM
Greg from The Talent Show sure drew a different lesson than I did from Kevin Mattson's Dissent article on the Left's Michael Moore problem. With respect, I think it's more than just a matter of Moore's "sloppy and crude style,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2003 01:38 PM
Neal does Sid: For the first time ever, I saw Bill sob. I went behind his desk and rubbed his shoulders. It was going to be OK, I told him. "Don't worry about these people," I said. "They have no...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2003 10:25 AM
That article on so-called "Hipublicans" continues to reverberate. Brink Lindsey, noting Julian Sanchez's question about young conservatives versus libertarians and the subsequent strident comments it sparked, has an interesting comment of his own: I'm reminded of a question I've asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 01:15 PM
Another great column from David Aaronovitch on British lefty flirtation with and denial about anti-Semitism. He addresses, among other things, a curious phenomenon (that I've often noted, particularly in Britain): people will auto-excuse their own antipathy towards Jews, on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 08:54 AM
Sweet Gay Jesus It sounds like a hoax to me, but Tim Blair is all over the story of the Melbourne academic who has devoted his professional life and a considerable sum of public money to "proving" that Jesus was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2003 07:43 AM
Clueless is as clueless does Wilson Quarterly editor Steven Lagerfield reviews Gerald Graff's Clueless in Academe: Mr. Graff flirts with the notion that there might be something wrong with today's scholarship that accounts for students' difficulties--things like impenetrable jargon, needless...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2003 10:33 AM
From the New Republic's Notebook: MOTHER OF ALL CONDESCENSION "As the mother of a teenage daughter, I know, if you don't set limits around children, they'll test you, and we should have predicted that there would be the looting or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 27, 2003 09:12 AM
Grape Mrs. Carillon! Katrina vanden Heuvel imagines that Emma Goldman, were she alive today, would be "shaking it" with "radical cheerleaders" like the "Dirty Southern Belles, or Radical Teen Cheer. There is, of course, no way of testing this hypothesis,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 10:49 PM
Better than "My Lovely Horse"? I just stumbled on this page about Austria's entry in this year's Eurovision Song competition (via Michael Jennings, by way of Natalie Solent.) The song is by one Alf Poier and to judge from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 25, 2003 08:19 AM
Misdirected Openness As Instantman says, the author of this article on university campus conservatives seems to be straining a bit too hard to blame outside forces for the rightward trend he discusses even as he documents it, almost as though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2003 01:36 AM
Stephen Pollard reports on the New Statesman's cover story "outing" British "neoconservatives" mentioned below: the supposed six leading British neocons: David Aaronovitch, John Lloyd, Daniel Finkelstein, Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, and yours truly. As usual, the piece itself completely misunderstood...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 23, 2003 09:24 AM
They just can't let go of the Jew thing... The New Statesman (the British paleo-left journal of "Kosher Conspiracy" infamy) has sunk to a new low, apparently launching a program of "outing" British "neo-conservatives". (i.e., exposing British Jews in high...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2003 12:09 PM
Everything Must Go Head on over to Honest Jim Treacher's House of Items. He's slashing prices. If war makes you uncomfortable, and you ain't like it, Treacher's your man....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 09:08 AM
We will never have true dissent till we find a way to make it mandatory Emily Jones, commenting on the story of the Arcata City Council ordinance which imposes a $57 fine on anyone who cooperates with the USA Patriot...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2003 08:59 AM
I think I know this guy... More proof that the Onion is great: BERKELEY, CA Nineties punk Drew Tolbert, 29, expressed scorn Monday for the punks of today, denouncing them as "phony poseurs unworthy of the word 'punk.'" "These kids...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2003 04:50 PM
Cyber-busking, I mean. The last time I stood up in the blogospheric square with my virtual guitar and tried to foist unsolicited "entertainment" on digital passersby, my little operation got overwhelmed by a flood of Insta-gawkers and other looky-loos....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 18, 2003 11:57 AM
Iraqi exile Hamid Ali Alkifaey had a good piece in yesterday's Guardian: No Iraqi can forget the moment when Saddam's statue was pulled down by Iraqis, assisted by US forces, in Baghdad. On that memorable day, April 9 2003, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 17, 2003 08:00 AM
This Bomb has no Title Political correctness has squelched the tradition of bomb graffiti in the US Navy. Strategy Page says: it was only a matter of time before a few pictures of irreverent chalk marks on 500 pound bombs...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2003 10:00 AM
They're talking about wig-reform again. British judges and other court personnel are required to wear outlandish costumes which include elaborate neckpieces and sashes and funny little powdered wigs. Americans find them hilarious, but Brits seem oddly fond of them. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2003 11:01 AM
Steven Chapman points out, and illustrates, that the BBC's quotations from Salam Pax have a been a bit "selective."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2003 09:33 AM
Freedom of Expression Requires Ceaseless Censorship Julian Petley, chairman of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, on why Fox News should be banned from Britain: "I'm not in favour of censorship, but Murdoch would like to do with British...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2003 08:16 AM
Mimesis Kills On the subject of authors being mistaken for their characters (see post below, Song Talk), Dave from Geek Life sent along this link to the transcript of the interrogation of Langston Hughes during the McCarthy Hearings. This bit...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2003 07:57 AM
He's only stating the obvious, perhaps, but Jonathon Freedland's column on Tam Dalyell's not-even-thinly-veiled anti-Semitism is worth reading for its plain-spoken clarity alone. Dalyell's conception of the Likudnik Menace differs from Buchananite stateside versions in that he avoids euphemisms and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2003 09:21 AM
Song Talk I know I keep claiming that "normal" blogging will resume presently. I'm sticking to that story. The aftermath of the "democracy, whisky, sexy" cyberbusking experiment and the mini-tour has been a bit crazy. I got around 3,000 emails...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2003 07:56 AM
Folk Wraiths vs. the new New Dylans This site is starting to look more like a rockblog than a warblog lately. Sorry about that. Nothing wrong with it I suppose, though I imagine the thousands who still visit this site...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2003 10:03 AM
Big E, Little E, Pseudo E I know the internet has been around for awhile, but this is the first time I've ever felt any significant impact from it upon my own shows and tours. A case in point: at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2003 09:57 AM
A lot of bands stay at the Palace Hotel in Tonelle, New Jersey, as a lot of clubs have running deals. There's not that much more to say about that, except that that's where I'm typing this now. I think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2003 08:33 AM
The lyrics of that song I've received quite a few requests for the lyrics to "democracy, whisky, sexy." If you're interested in that sort of thing, allow me to direct you to Captain Mojo, who has posted the lyrics as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2003 11:09 PM
Here's a really terrific essay by Matt Welch on Vaclav Havel, Prague, Orwell, and much else. If you don't know the story of Havel, the Plastic People of the Universe, Charta 77, and its crucial role in freeing eastern Europe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2003 07:45 AM
Cyber-busking Update Thanks very much to everyone who posted links to "democracy, whisky, sexy", and to everyone who bothered to stop and check it out. And especially to those generous souls who found it within themselves to toss some spare...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2003 05:09 PM
Hey folks. Wanna hear my new song "democracy, whisky, sexy"? Go here. It's a totally free mp3, though, as always, you can tip your blogger/"singer"-songwriter if you feel like it (by clicking on the Amazon tip jar or pay pal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 20, 2003 04:16 PM
Is there more to the Left than a dense, reflexive "anti-Imperialism"? There has to be, though sometimes it seems hard to identify. "The Left has lost the plot" is the title of this clear, well-stated recapitulation of the argument that,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 11:07 AM
Sullivan's Iraq invasion Von Hoffman awards (for spectacularly ill-timed wrong predictions) are up, predictable and amusing as usual. My favorite is from der Spiegel: Gruesome days for the German foreign minister: Every morning at nine, his staff briefs him on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 08:26 AM
Now they tell us This piece by CNN news chief executive Eason Jordan about how CNN had no choice but to act as little more than a propaganda arm of the Saddam regime while the monster was in power is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 07:53 AM
Hey, Matt. Great idea! On the outside chance that there's anyone who reads this blog who doesn't check Welch's blog first, there's a lot of great stuff up there now, including an absorbing, continuing tale (a couple of posts so...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2003 06:28 AM
I gotta say, this little story from Eric Alterman about his friend Mike, Vaclav Havel, and the Curse of Lou Reed is the most entertaining thing I've read in quite awhile. Politics aside, good writing and an interesting story always...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2003 10:52 AM
War aims, anti-war aims Steven Chapman comments on the latest from Brendan O'Neill and Mick Hume, and I think he really has them pegged: Reading through these pieces, as well as all the rest of Spiked's war output, I get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2003 09:19 AM
Game Over This sort of thing seems to happen on TV just about once a day: Just before ducking into his posh doorway the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N. tells a reporter, among other things, "the game is over." Later...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 05:09 PM
Perry de Haviland on the Saddam-toppling: I have just watched live on TV via SkyNews as US soldiers used an armoured recovery vehicle to pull down the huge statue of Saddam Hussain in the very heart of Baghdad, surrounded by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 12:15 PM
I don't know why I keep quoting-- you should really just go over to Harry's Place and eliminate the middleman. But here's a quote anyway from my favorite pro-Liberation man of the left: I really resisted the temptation to post...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 11:55 AM
I like my nationlism a little on the blatent side The dramatic images of the most recent toppling of a big Saddam statue are as eloquent as pictures ever are, and have evoked memories of similarly-erected and -toppled statues of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 10:25 AM
Observe This Mary Riddell mocks "the brave 'rescue' of Private Jessica Lynch from the hospital ward where she was being treated with all available medical skill." Of course, as Steven Den Beste points out in a characteristically sharp and prickly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 09:17 AM
Wankers! Harry saw this on Sky News: Amazing television on Sky News for the past hour or so as David Chater wanders around the streets of central Baghdad chatting live to US marines and trying to talk to celebrating Iraqi...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 08:03 AM
Hang on to your feck Clarity on "moral clarity" from Ted Hinchman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 07:59 AM
The Crying of Lot 49 (via John Daley, who says his referral logs indicate that almost all who arrived at his site through Indymedia were from .edu locations. Interesting? Maybe not. All I know is, there's a twisted, complex web...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 07:18 AM
An assertion of your beliefs Apocalypse House, from Harden Structures, Inc.: The Apocalypse House by Harden Structures Incorporated is designed specifically for: climatic catastrophe, nuclear blast, nuclear fallout, biological agents, chemical weapons, fires, floods and conventional weapons assaults... At Harden...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2003 06:34 AM
Fug Big Media "Blogging isn't creating a new underground movement as much as it's creating a new batch of Norman Mailers." Well, now, that's just what we need... The quote comes from this interesting take by Steven Rubio, from a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2003 11:58 AM
Preaching the 11th Commandment From an interview with André Glucksmann: Glucksmann: In these pacifist times, we have had long debates in Die Zeit. Joschka Fischer did not agree with me for a long time. In the end he conceded that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 8, 2003 09:17 AM
Cultural Chauvinism-- Theirs, Ours Jeff Jarvis saw the same BBC Newsnight that I did, and was not amused quite as much as I was. He has fisked the docu-clip, but didn't comment on the discussion afterward, which was where most...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2003 09:14 AM
I think all the suitable puns on the name "Kerry" have already been used as titles at one time or another You know, I enjoy over-reacting to politicians' rhetorical infelicities as much as the next guy, but this pundit-manufactured brouhaha...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2003 12:22 PM
You can't say that on television! Good and evil, I mean. The other day I wrote a little thing about Old Europe's tendency to look to a sensationalist caricature of evangelical Christianity as way to elucidate a US foreign policy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 04:11 PM
Close but no bouquet? With all the customary disclaimers about never believing what you read, this is the first report I've seen of Iraqis welcoming US soldiers that actually mentions the proverbial flowers. (And this is Reuters after all.) Or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 02:31 PM
Imperia are hard to do Stephen Chapman has this comment on the latest from Paddy Ashdown's Bosnia: Europeans are as willing to take over other people's countries and run them as protectorates as any Rumsfeld... I'll wager that the EU's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 02:30 PM
"In a world torn apart by the monotones of bullies and buffoons..." Howard Jacobson, on why the peace movement never quite persuaded him: I was ripe, if anyone was, for the plucking. Any decent peace movement could have picked me...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 09:22 AM
Terrible Doubt Johann Hari talks sense once again: Nobody nobody, not the anti-war movement nor Jacques Chirac nor George Galloway was able to adopt a position towards Iraq that wouldn't result directly in the deaths of innocent people....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 08:18 AM
Letter from Gotham posts a reminder of this classic column from Michael Kelly. I miss him already. Also from Diane, a prediction that the taking of Baghdad will be "seduction, not rape." She means, more subtlety than blitzkrieg. Let's hope...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:19 AM
Hoax According to Snopes, that "where do they find young men like this" story that caused many lumps to rise in many throats, is a cyb-urban legend. Apparently, Martin Savidge never filed such a report. There's no indication of how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:05 AM
More banal evil Every bit of news from the field is suspect, perhaps, but, for what it's worth, here's the latest sign of grim goings-on in Saddam's Iraq. It sounds like someone converted office space into a make-shift mass grave....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2003 07:04 AM
Oh, my God. I'm speechless. Michael Kelly has been killed. I've been reading his stuff since his New Republic days. You read a person's writing over the years, you really feel like you know him. He was a decent, honest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2003 02:53 PM
"One is tempted to say the destiny of America is in the hands of a small group of Protestant bigots." So says an editorial quoted with apparently unintended irony from Le Monde (a daily newspaper from a nominally Catholic nation)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2003 02:04 PM
Another good one from LT Smash, "heard on the street": "Did you hear about the bus?" One of the local men is talking to me. He's referring to an incident in Iraq, where a large van attemted to run a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 08:40 AM
Idealists in Hawks' Clothing Stephen Pollard, my favorite British left wing neocon (really!) and proprietor of one of the best weblogs around, has a good piece in today's Independent on what to many is a counter-intuitive squabble: that between the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2003 08:33 AM
Of Rosbeefs, Yanquis, and Frogues Here's the latest report, which includes a picture, of the appalling desecration, complete with swastika, of the war memorial at the British cemetery in Etaples. I'm not even going to try to gather all the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 01:02 PM
"The Baath Party were bad people, they used to hurt people inside the police station. "You say bad words about Saddam, they take you in there and you never come out." Royal Marines uncover evidence of torture at an Abu...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 09:58 AM
Professional Journalism The main point of this lengthy, sophomoric, error-ridden BBC essay on whether Tony Blair is a neo-con (linked by many including OxBlog and Stephen Pollard) is to demonstrate that its author has no earthly idea of what he's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 09:01 AM
Toxic Fog Syndrome Matt Welch rings some apt alarms regarding "Patriot II," concluding: One does not have to believe that Ashcroft is a Constitution-shredding ghoul to find these measures alarming, improper and possibly illegal. Glancing over the list above, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2003 08:39 AM
Anti-Julieism Salty blogger vs. salty communist, er, I mean columnist: Your big mistake, Saddam old man, was not calling yourself a Communist. You could have had exactly the same power, exactly the same control, gassed exactly as many Kurds, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 11:57 AM
It will end in disaster... I don't think it "means" anything, but this page of "told you so"s by Guardian columnists really does look like the ones that greeted the on-line clicker during what nobody realized was the final phase...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2003 08:29 AM
Steven Chapman counts his bin Ladens: War in Afghanistan was supposed to yield "1,000 bin Ladens." Now Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak claims the war in Iraq will yield "100 bin Ladens." That's a total of 1,100 bin Ladens - but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2003 08:53 AM
Hallowed be thy name Julie Burchill accuses the NIONists (as Steyn has been calling them) of self-indulgence. It's been done before, but this one is particularly scrappy and perfectly calibrated to irritate every single reader who doesn't immediately say "amen"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2003 09:00 AM
Achieving Parody Yet more clever silliness from Mark Steyn, on the media quagmire: After little more than a week, is this war coverage in trouble? Already questions are being raised about whether the media's plan was fatally flawed. Several analysts...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 01:24 PM
William Kristol cheers on the Gephardt liberals, vs. the "Dominique de Villepin left": The Gephardt liberals are patriots. They supported the president in the run-up to this war, and strongly support the war now that it has begun. It would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2003 11:04 AM
Here's an interesting rundown of claims and counter-claims about incidents in the war. Predictable result: no one really knows what's going on, and every report should be regarded with skepticism. Many see this as a "bias" issue (that is, it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 08:00 AM
Steven Chapman watches Question Time, freaks out, makes a couple of good points, captures the moment for posterity....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2003 07:10 AM
Funny stuff: Leaders of the anti-war movement announced Tuesday that as the war progressed in Iraq, the movement was headed into a "dangerous quagmire". Angela Hassle-Moore, leader of a recent protest march stated, "We have lost our focus. What are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 06:17 PM
Peter Beinart comments, approvingly I believe, on the kinder, gentler war. He's right about the irony implied in his subtitle-- in the war as in much else, Bush's Clintonian streak is something few of his critics, and hardly any of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 05:10 PM
According to this Sky News report, the distribution of food and water in the southern town of Al Zubayr had to be halted because Iraqi forces fired into the crowd: Reporter Ian Bruce, who is travelling with Scots unit Black...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2003 10:08 AM
The perspicuous in pursuit of the depraved Many have linked to this, but only Moira Breen was clever enough to describe it as "auto-Godwinization"....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 11:24 PM
I find this extensive rumination on the meaning of "Not in Our Name" (from spiked's Jennie Bristow) to be rather brilliant: Why go for 'Not in my name' rather than something shorter and to the point - like, for example...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 08:19 AM
Jim Henley provides a good, thoughtful summation of where the war stands as he sees it, focusing on the nexus between psychology, politics and tactics. I think he's probably right about this: the Iraqi regime doesn't realize it's doomed. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 07:33 AM
What's the matter? Afraid of a little competition? Is it funny that the weblog section in this New York Times war-media roundup features the Command Post prominently, yet failed to include the url? Yeah, just a little....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2003 05:33 AM
Post-Warblog Warblogging Harry has changed his nom-de-html from Steele to Hatchet. He's got a bee in his bonnet about the term "warblogger," which is fair enough-- a lot of webloggers don't like the term. I don't care about the term...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 01:48 PM
The Basra uprising appears to be for real. Fox News says the information comes from British central command as well as embedded Sky reporters. Fox is also reporting that Fedayeen are posing as US soldiers, firing on Iraqi regular troops...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 12:56 PM
Two can play at that game Now don't choke on your freedom fries or anything, but "a growing number of restaurants in Germany are taking everything American off their menus to protest the war in Iraq." There follows a list...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 12:47 PM
David Aaronovitch tries to puzzle out why the anti-war movement in Britain, even at its low ebb, has been "so bloody big." As he says, it's not at all obvious. He has this observation along with an anecdote about a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 08:07 AM
Here's your daily link to the Command Post, which is shaping up to be the most comprehensive breaking news warblog; and now there's an op-ed area....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 07:43 AM
Urban Combat An interesting observation from Jonathon Marcus on the BBC warblog: I think British forces are very reluctant to move into Basra, after all this is a largely Shia city they believed they would be welcomed in. But the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 07:17 AM
Oh, Please... Paul Krugman: By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2003 06:56 AM
Merde in France reports on French war coverage: The pro-Saddam press coverage in France has gone way over the top. Televised news on TF1 and France2 (state TV) are all but openly rooting for Iraqi victory. A GI resting on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 11:08 PM
Michael Moore at the Oscars You know, I was just as surprised as anyone else that Michael Moore's speech about fictitious-ification or whatever at the Oscars was received with less than total enthusiasm. I'm sure many, maybe even most of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:59 PM
British Spin and Harry Steele respond to American BBC-bashing. Both of them hit the heads of many nails....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 10:55 AM
No matter how dubious and fake-looking Saddam's TV appearances may seem to us, they're working in Iraq, sending the message that it's not yet safe to oppose Saddam from within. According John Simpson on the BBC warblog, anyway: Ordinary Iraqis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:39 AM
Wish I could do that... Lileks on the spirit of the BBC: the reporter wanted to flip a particular switch that makes right-thinking people nod sagely: the passionate idealist clich. Its one of the interminable resonances of the class of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 07:11 AM
"Journalists... challenge the establishment, while conservatives want to conserve it." There is a style of blogging (and of blurb journalism in print) that might be described as "pull-quoting with ironic caption." It's most satisfying when the person being quoted is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 24, 2003 06:40 AM
Manufacturing Dissent There is a private elementary school in my neighborhood, the gates of which are currently festooned with adorable hand-made anti-war posters. I happened to be walking by last week when they were being put up. It was clearly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 07:24 PM
Re-route In case you haven't caught it yet, the Command Post is now here....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 06:49 PM
Poseurs for Fragging Steven Den Beste posts a photo of a demo sign which reads: "We Support our Troops when they SHOOT their officers," and has some pointed comments. "Don't they understand," asks Den Beste, "what their own sign really...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 05:52 PM
A Soldier Gone Postal? The word on the US soldier who perpetrated the Camp Penn. grenade attack is that he is an American Muslim convert. Jim Lacey, the Time Magazine reporter at the camp, offered this speculation during a phone...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 23, 2003 08:27 AM
Pyrotechnics Say what you want about Robert Fisk: the man certainly can write. This report from the center the Baghdad assault is about as gripping and powerful as gripping and powerful get. Example: Along the streets a few Iraqis could...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 11:07 AM
Defenestration Interruptus? Popshot.net turns up this snippet from an interview with Robbie Williams: Any embarassing celebrity run-ins of note? I was at a party and completely and totally off my face -- mushrooms, Ectasy, all sorts of shit. And I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 10:07 AM
Late to every party I keep meaning to mention Jeff Jarvis's excellent breaking news warblog-- probably the best one out there. And the Michele-sparked Command Post group warblog is quite a buzzmachine itself. Check 'em out....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 08:51 AM
Confused is the word The Cracker Barrel Philosopher has turned up this remarkable quote from a Not in Our Name activist: "Saddam is a very confused and mixed up man," said activist Elise Bontrager. "And I think maybe that he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2003 07:39 AM
"A nation of moaning sissies..." Noel Gallagher waxes political: "Whoever is the British Prime Minister is tied to America. It's been that way ever since the Second World War, and even Tony Blair can't change that. Politics is like football...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 07:22 PM
"The commander of Iraq's 51st division and his top deputy surrendered to United States Marine forces today, according to American military officials..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 03:13 PM
MTV News Speaking of news networks and so forth, I find myself straying rather more often than I'd ever imagined to MTV. I find it fascinating, both for the novelty and for the call-ins and interviews with young viewers: a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 11:11 AM
William Saletan has been watching the United Nations Security Council on C-SPAN: The council was meeting to discuss the latest update from weapons inspector Hans Blix. Blix was downcast because, having been forced to leave Iraq a few days ago...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 07:44 AM
To be pitied or censured? Michael Moore appears to be suffering from False Consensus Effect....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2003 06:38 AM
Yuck: In a unique form of opposition, some protesters at the Federal Building staged a "vomit in,'' by heaving on the sidewalks and plaza areas in the back and front of the building to show that the war in Iraq...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 06:11 PM
Tim Blair heard this call on an Australian radio talk show: The [call] came from an older woman named Jill. Her family had migrated to Australia after WWII. "I wish we'd had politicians in the 1930s with the guts of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 05:59 PM
I finally got around to watching this Insta-linked docu-clip by Evan Coyne Maloney. The strange thing about this montage depicting the loony extremes of the San Francisco protest milieu is that it barely scratches the surface of SF bay area...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 01:00 PM
Partially Obscured by Wings Doc Searls comments on the Heritage Foundation's canny spambiguous bulk mail (I got one) and the dearth of peace-bloggers. A lot of folks expressed irritation at what has been seen as an attempt to co-opt the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 09:49 AM
Wet Paint Like everyone is saying, there's not much to say. Watching CNN is like watching water evaporate. The blather of news network talking heads evokes the meandering inanity of a PBS pledge drive: "...to show your support for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 20, 2003 07:11 AM
Le fiasco, c'est moi The sands continue to shift in the aftermath of Germany's ill-conceived alliance with "Operetta-style Gaullism." In Berlin, a reporter talking to a German official heard that the Schroeder government initially believed Iraq was a one-issue crisis,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 08:55 AM
Hari's Place Harry Steele examines the future prospects of the Stop the War movement, now that the war has, at long last, lumbered into the category "situation: unstoppable." Excellent observations as usual. The springboard consists of Eve of War columns...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2003 07:26 AM
Isn't that just like a man? Madeleine Bunting psychoanalyzes notorious male Tony Blair, and the commentators who misunderestimated him: Could it be that a largely male commentariat has such a gendered perception of emotions (broadly summed up as "women have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:43 AM
Shoe the Children From this report on accused kidnapper/weirdo/maniac Brian David Mitchell: Mitchell was described by his stepson, Derrick Thompson, as a "weird" man who had talked to God in the desert after taking 10 hits of LSD. "They said...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:38 AM
Here's an impassioned op-ed by Kurdistan Prime Minister Barham Salih, pleading to the British Left to support the invasion of Iraq should be required reading: Regrettably, many are denouncing a war that would liberate Iraq. Like those who shunned us...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 17, 2003 07:12 AM
Gary is keeping tabs on all the blogoshperic commentary on the neocon/anti-Semitism debate-- just go to his page and follow the links that look interesting. Max Sawicky has a good discussion of the matter. I think this sums up a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2003 02:12 PM
More on anti-Semitism Here's Kevin Drum's response to the commentary on various blogs in response to his neocon/anti-Semitism question, including this concluding lament: It's simply not possible to take into account every possible connotation of every word you write, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 16, 2003 11:20 AM
Thomas Nephew, still reluctantly hawkish, responds to some of the "balking hawks" who have been driven back over the fence by the recent diplomatic meltdown. I recommend reading the whole post, which is a smart and, I think, pretty accurate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 09:42 AM
Clark more Creep than Comic Harry Steele has some apt comments on the Neil Clark hatchet-job on Djindjic which I mentioned below. Having googled Clark and found the "Milosevic: Prisoner of Conscience" essay, Steele quotes the bit about the ecstasy-inducing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 07:32 AM
The Independent's Terence Blacker on Anti-War Chic: Unlike many protests in the past, from Vietnam to fox-hunting, the current campaign has the huge advantage of not involving the slightest risk to your person or your reputation. Marches are happy social...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2003 05:31 AM
Thin Ice CalPundit Kevin Drum wonders how to distinguish "legitimate criticism" of Jewish neoconservatives from anti-Semitism. The redoubtable Gary Farber offers a sensible answer. Drum distills the "relevant facts" into five statements that he appears to regard as self-evident, neutral,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2003 03:30 PM
Pinter or Ali? The New Statesman now charges for 100% of its content on the web, so I rarely encounter the writing of Neil Clark when I'm not in England. Clark is a genuine puzzle. If his determinedly perverse contrarian...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 14, 2003 10:54 AM
Bill Quick on GWB: Bush has become Bushy the Clown, wandering the halls of international diplomacy in big floppy clown shoes, humiliatingly begging for a crust of condescension from a circus audience that despises him, all the while beating himself...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 01:55 PM
This Washington Post leader zeroes in on the Jim Moran situation: Mr. Moran's comment will be used to concentrate the poison of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world where it remains virulent and dangerous. Jews in fact are far...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2003 10:20 AM
Eat Sand, Tree-hugger Fritz Schrank has a lengthy and balanced post on the many-levelled ironies revealed by this NYT article on a controversial plan to "restore" Presidio Park's "original" sand dunes by chopping down a small number of non-native eucalyptus...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 05:32 PM
I agree with Ted Barlow on the James P. Moran affair. I don't buy the "apology" for one moment. Why isn't it a "Trent Lott Moment," as Glenn Reynolds described it? In the Lott case, virtually the entire right-leaning punditocracy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 11:17 AM
Ferry Boats The Portuguese Foreign Minister tells it like it is: "Let us suppose Portugal, proper or its archipelagos, faced a threat, who would come to our rescue? The European Commission, France, Germany? "I think it would be NATO who...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 11, 2003 07:38 AM
Unanswered questions Tony Benn recently participated in an on-line chat Q&A session with Guardian readers. As British Spin points out, he simply avoided questions that challenged his point of view, which is what generally happens in celeb-chats. However, he also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 9, 2003 11:01 AM
I missed this point by point challenge to conventional anti-war propositions from Nick Cohen in last week's Observer. Is being "stuck with cold war slogans" a barrier to understanding as well as to effective argument? You bet it is. Here's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 8, 2003 12:02 PM
Hate Mail Revisited A while back I noted with some puzzlement the fact that almost all of the hate mail I receive tends to feature slurs against homosexuals. I don't get it very often, but when I do get it,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 7, 2003 01:50 PM
Straight Outta Central Casting, part xxxvi: Sparks flew at an emergency Islamic summit today, with Saddam Hussain's deputy branding Kuwait's junior foreign minister a "monkey". The virulent exchange began when Sheikh Mohammad Sabah al-Sabah, Kuwaiti Minister of Foreign Affairs, rose...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 10:39 AM
You can do what you want with me, but let the dictator go... A Daily Pundit commenter has turned up this novel approach to anti-war activism: A Hawke's Bay woman has written a letter to US President George W Bush,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2003 10:36 AM
The Americanization of Britain, continued Stephen Pollard reports on academic standards and university admissions policy in Britain, which seems to be steering itself towards following the disastrous American model. The "flexible targets" are not identity politics-based, as in America, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 3, 2003 10:28 AM
Every Bit of Clothing Ought to Make You Pretty Tony Blair gave a brief interview to the Guardian yesterday, described, with a several quotable quotes, here. "At various points in the interview, he betrayed his irritation with his party's left...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2003 10:08 AM
Are you tired of watching Steven Den Beste run circles around straw man-wielding, otherwise ill-equipped, opponents and demolishing them bit by bit, at a stately pace, with relentless logic and cold hard common sense? Me neither. Here's a fine example....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2003 08:18 AM
Yeah, I read the Independent Here's a lengthy and stimulating rumination from Howard Jacobson on the tendency, the desire (maybe you could even say the need) for anti-war types to link Israel to Iraq, to adduce Israel as the instructive,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2003 08:38 AM
Another great column from Johann Hari, on Bush's AEI speech and the promise of democracy in the Arab world. I doubt he's right in including Syria in his list of repressive regimes that can be nudged towards incremental democratization through...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2003 07:04 AM
Bush's neo-con speech It's too bad he hasn't been giving speeches like this all along, but it's welcome nonetheless. After weeks of "leaks" and trial balloons about proposed scenarios for post-Saddam Iraq, the administration seems to have, at last, committed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2003 09:10 AM
"I'm begging, I'm hoping..." George Michael is worried that today's young pop-stars aren't sophisticated or politically knowledgeable enough to manage to come up with anything nearly as insipid as "Do They Know it's Christmas" or "We are the World." It...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2003 06:34 PM
I asked God to send me a Lincoln, but all I got was this lousy Bush Paul Berman gets in touch with his inner Wolfowitz. Well, maybe not entirely, since he leaves Reagan off his list of Presidents who pushed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2003 11:08 AM
A nice little piece on being an American among anti-Americans in well-heeled Britain: in a way I'd been eager to deny, I sensed that the anti-Americanism around me wasn't the reasoned, rational position that many of its adherents made it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2003 09:25 AM
Don't Worry, said the Iraqi official Fifteen volunteers from the first 200 shields are moving into a bunker at the South Baghdad Electricity Plant in an effort to deter attack by America and its allies. However some of the shields...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 01:22 PM
They were all out of step but Jacques... Speaking of Steyn, here's his latest spiel on "Europe" (i.e. France) and the "Atlanticists" (practically everyone else.) Wrong or right, any argument that steps off from an Irving Berlin lyric is pretty...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 10:49 AM
Stephen Schwartz, perhaps best known today as an expert on Wahhabism, was, like many of today's neo-cons, a red diaper baby, and a communist and New Left activist in his youth. He also, it turns out, went to Lowell with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2003 08:24 AM
"War Tourism" Salam Pax isn't very impressed with the human shields either....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2003 11:06 PM
Writing on the Wall Somehow I missed this terrific profile of Robert Conquest that appeared in last week's Guardian. (Airstrip One and Cinderella, once again, have come to the rescue, bearing links and comments.) Many details I hadn't been aware...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2003 02:08 PM
Define "Stupid" Samizdata's Dale Amon has sparked an interesting debate on the semantics and appropriateness of the term "voluntary human shields" in the comments to this post. He's right about the semantic point, of course: whatever these nitwits choose to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2003 10:58 AM
Heroes or dupes? Those are the only choices offered in the sub-head of this fascinating piece by Michelle Goldberg on "human shields" in Iraq. Reading the article, other, less charitable descriptions spring to mind. They mean well. But they also...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 06:13 PM
Lileks just watched some footage of prime-time Iraqi TV, and he notes that the "kill the Jews" sermons of radical Muslim mullahs are way scarier when you see the video. The wild-eyed sword-swinging gibbering maniac that he describes is straight...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2003 10:23 AM
Knock it off, Hitch! DURING the many years I spent on the Left, the cause of self-determination for Kurdistan was high on the list of principles and priorities - there are many more Kurds than there are Palestinians and they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2003 06:58 PM
I keep meaning to mention, for anyone who hasn't happened upon it, that Paul Berman has written a response to the Michael Kelly column which appropriated the facts, though not the analysis, contained in Berman's old piece on Joschka Fischer....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2003 10:49 AM
Tolerate Liberal Democracy! You probably think you've read one too many essays on "what's wrong with today's Left," but if you can manage to fit another one in, I highly recommend "Can We Still Belong to the Left?" by blogger...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 10:26 PM
You've probably seen a few references to Ken Layne's little piece about the number of people who showed up for protests over the weekend vs. other important stats (like how many people went to church, Datyona, extreme sports, McDonalds.) And...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 01:53 PM
Arendt's editor, Eichmann's colleague It's well-known that the "de-nazification" program in post-war Germany was neither thorough (with regard to the regime's bureaucrat-perpetrators) nor effective (with regard to the hearts and minds of many "ordinary Germans" in the first years of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 09:32 AM
The Guardian's Jonathon Freedland correctly identifies the chief weakness of the current Peace Movement of which he is an unusually serious-minded member: a lack of convincing alternatives to the use of force as a means of removing Saddam. Outside of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 08:04 AM
Word circus fails to conceal coherence deficit Once again, the great Angelo Codevilla minces no words in this examination of the nature and reverberations of Bush's "unmade choices." The heart of this essay is a close-reading and analysis of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2003 07:09 AM
Hate Mail From Glenn Reynolds, I learn that Megan McArdle has been getting a whole lot of hate mail. She's pretty upset by it, it seems. I'm sure I don't get anywhere near as much hate mail as Glenn or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2003 02:23 PM
Interesting: It is unlikely that the war in Iraq will consist only of a land invasion. Rather, teams of special forces will be used to seize and secure strategic positions, such as the oilfields and the dams on the Tigris...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2003 07:55 AM
"More unsavory background on Joschka Fischer," is how this article has been described by practically everyone who has linked to it, usually without further comment. Actually, it's pretty much the same unsavory background summarized in Michael Kelly's cribbed-from-Berman column. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2003 12:00 PM
Stop the War. But not really. I guess I went a little overboard in my grouchy post below, the one complaining about Eric Alterman. I find his tone and attitude extremely irritating, but I imagine many could say the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2003 06:56 PM
Beato-gate I hate to bring up Alterman again, but I think Matt Welch's comment on the Beato-gate scandal (details here and in Matt's post) is worth quoting: I make a point of not busting anyone's chops for what they do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 10:30 AM
I'm sure I won't be the first or only one to link to this arresting WSJ editorial illustrating the consonance of aims and methods between Saddam and Osama. Examples are furnished from the state-controlled (obviously) Iraqi press, complete with scans...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 07:50 AM
What the? Ralf Goergens makes a strong case that German and French gamesmanship on Iraq is motivated by "electoral and financial opportunism." I think he's right. One of his commenters, however, thinks there's more to it where the French and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2003 07:33 AM
Several readers have emailed to let me know that Eric Alterman, to their own evident amusement, agrees with my view of Michael Kelly's warped presentation of Paul Berman's Joschka Fischer. "Say it ain't so..." "There must be some mistake..." No...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 02:55 PM
Of Morons and Multilateralists Daniel Drezner writes that the Bush administration's foreign policy has been far more "multi-lateralist" than it's given credit for. Many would object that this is insincere multilateralism, a cynical use of multilateral institutions as cover for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 12:18 PM
Steven Chapman succinctly describes the "Monbiot Plan" for Iraq: That's the one where a coalition of righteous nations (Narnia, Middle-earth, Neverland) does the business while America stands aside, hangs its head, wrings its hands, gazes at its navel, beats its...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2003 09:36 AM
Several blogs have noted this column, in which Michael Kelly calls attention to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's unsavory past as a generation '68/New Left radical. This column is largely a reprise of the "Fischer Affair" as detailed in Paul...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2003 10:59 PM
Ron Liddle lands some punches in this complaint that the Anglo-American "special relationship" is often a one way street. Most acutely here: within weeks of September 11 2001, the US failed, astonishingly, to outlaw Noraid, despite having proscribed and seized...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2003 09:46 AM
Obstruction and other Skullduggery In today's Wall Street Journal, Khidir Hamza, erstwhile Iraqi nuclear scientist and co-author of the book Saddam's Bombmaker, reiterates two generally accepted (though often only vaguely described or illustrated) conclusions: (a) that weapons inspections alone can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 04:06 PM
Schoolhouse Iraq MEMRI provides this account of Saddam's military pedagogy. Socrates he ain't: Every few days, President Saddam Hussein meets with his son Qusay Saddam Hussein, the Inspector of the Republican Guards, and with his top military echelons to brief...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 08:43 AM
Stephen Pollard files yet another report from Brussels: Talking to senior Commission officials, MEPs and other such people, it's clearer than ever that the Franco-German drive to frustrate Bush reflects their own frustration at seeing their EU leadership role slipping...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2003 07:19 AM
David Warren has this interesting behind-the-scenes account of the recent NATO-rattling Weasels vs. Turks grudge match: behind closed doors, according to several diplomats who were present, a remarkable debate took place, in which not the Americans but the other European...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 11:09 PM
I believe Bill Quick, back from his mercifully brief fishing trip, has the right idea here: I still think Bush waited far too long to attack Iraq, and most of his international problems stem from that fact. The endless delay...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 12:13 PM
Ouch. Christopher Hitchens lets him have it. (Chirac I mean-- "the rat that tried to roar.") We are all aware of the fact that French companies and the French state are owed immense sums of money by Saddam Hussein. We...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 11:25 AM
Pawing Through Foreign Affairs Fouad Ajami's optimistic assessment of the possibilities for a post-Saddam Iraq rightly got a fair amount of blogospheric attention, but I only just now happened upon this stimulating essay by Michael Scott Doran, from the same...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2003 10:04 AM
Over at Layman's Logic, the Philosophical Cowboy has provided the Iraqis with a case for the defense in response to Counselor Powell's opening remarks. Check it out. He also posts an email which begins: Dear Sir / Madam, I am...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2003 12:33 PM
On the Ground in Old Europe Stephen Pollard reports on Old Europe's media coverage of Powell's UN presentation: I'm in Brussels at the moment. Just watched Colin Powell at the UN on CNN. I flicked over my TV as he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 9, 2003 12:14 PM
Did you hear about that woman who waltzed through an unmanned security checkpoint at SFO and boarded her flight with unscreened carry-on baggage? She was arrested when her flight arrived in Baltimore. By the time airport security sprang into action...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 12:04 PM
They'll print anything And that's a good thing, on the whole. Welch and Sullivan both subject this piece of drivel (intended to discredit the eastern European democracies) to the appropriate scorn. "New thinking." Hah! The author, Jonathon Steele, can sometimes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 11:27 AM
A More Powerful Vocabulary Even if you, like Eric Alterman, can ignore the "Chomskyite rhetoric," there's still a great deal of silliness in this essay by Kane Pryor. The idea is that the diabolical geniuses behind the Bush "propaganda machine,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2003 07:57 AM
Goofyness, Strangeness and Charm I really enjoyed Matt Welch's pointed complaints about this essay on Orwell by Louis Menand, particularly this one: the point is not that he was always Right, but that he presented one of the most compelling...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 06:16 PM
The Singer not the Song I imagine there are quite a few people out there like Mary McGrory, who have opposed war in Iraq solely because George Bush proposed it, and now find that they support it solely because it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 10:10 AM
Lollygaggin' Here's Stephen H. Hayes's amusing take on the statement read by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in response to Colin Powell's UN presentation, including this sort of thing: Did he honestly recommend that Baghdad could demonstrate its intent...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 09:12 AM
Window Dressing My North Oakland neighborhood has no shortage of anti-war signs in the windows, on the cars, on the telephone poles, and spray-painted on the stop signs. This has pretty much been the case for as long as I've...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2003 07:28 AM
Michael Gove sees a connection between contemporary Germany's sorry state and the failings of the class of '68. That generation was in revolt at what it saw as the stuffy conformity of the bourgeois Germany which Adenauer created, and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2003 08:29 AM
Babyish Straw Men and the Women who Devour Them You know the anti-war "movement" is in trouble when someone like Julie Burchill, socialist, Guardian columnist and proud anti-American (is there any other kind?) comes out against Saddam and effectively in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2003 01:06 PM
Find a parade and pretend to have been in it all along, even though you showed up a bit late... Down in L.A. for the weekend, reading the L.A. Times in actual dead tree form for the first time in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 3, 2003 08:50 AM
Quaintness worth a second cup... Hey, there. I had to take a few days off. Holidays are a lot of work, aren't they? I hope everyone had a good Christmas, New Year's, etc. No, really. I admit it might not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2003 11:56 AM
We mean it, man... The Corner has, for some reason (probably having to do with Joe Strummer's recent death), deemed it necessary to coin a term for conservatives who like 70s-era punk rock: The Punky Cons! (Start here and search...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2002 09:57 AM
Pusillanimity? Cockeyed optimist vs. Clear-eyed skeptic? No surprises here, I'm sure, but I think the skeptics have the stronger case. It's not a matter of whose predictions will end up coming to pass, or whose predictions will be closer to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2002 08:47 AM
"Declaration" Warning: this post makes what is arguably the most trivial observation possible about the Iraq WMD declaration. I've noticed something strange about the pronunciation of the word "declaration." When it refers to something ordinary or unremarkable, as in a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 05:40 PM
Now don't fall out of your chair in astonishment or anything, but the author of this piece in the Economist prefers Adam Smith to Karl Marx. Communism is all but dead as a system of government, but Marxism lives on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 02:25 PM
Lott Steps Down! Well, how about that. He did the right thing after all. And it looks like Bill Frist is in. These wise words from Peggy Noonan on Republicans and race are no less relevant and valuable: Maybe it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2002 09:43 AM
Despair A Corner correspondent, reflecting on Trent Lott, Cardinal Law, and the possibility that Lott may manage to get enough support from fellow Republican Senators to allow him to hang on, poses some pointed questions: If Trent remains, what does...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 01:00 PM
The Incredible Mr. Limpet India launches the world's first organic Navy, planning to deploy dolphins to blow up enemy warships and submarines. Early trials have succeeded in training dolphins to plant the "Maindeka" limpet mine onto enemy ships. O.P. Yadav,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 11:45 AM
Steven Chapman gives Brendan O'Neill a good dressing down over this more or less risible foray into criticism of military tactics and strategy. Chapman is quite right. Eminent Journalist O'Neill doesn't seem to have much of a clue. Chapman does,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2002 09:20 AM
Krauthammer, once again, on Trent Lott: A man who has no use--let alone no feel--for colorblindness has no business being a leader of the conservative party. True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 11:23 PM
Every so often I'll receive a petulant email demanding: "whose side are you on?" (Or more often, "who's side are you on?") The latest trend in this venerable tradition (if venerable is the word I want) is to include the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 03:06 PM
Tired of all the familiar positions from which to jump on Trent Lott? Here's a new one from Christopher Hitchens: Concerning Sen. Lott, I can't hope to improve on the admirable flurry of columns from hard-line conservatives calling for his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 12:02 PM
See you in the fourth dimension Josh Marshall noticed this on Hardball a couple of nights ago: Oh man! There's a quote from Frank Luntz tonight on Hardball that's so choice it's almost beyond belief. We're going to be waiting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 10:32 AM
H.S. A.R.T. A theatre producer is to face a retrial after a jury today failed to decide whether he had a "lawful excuse" for decapitating a 150,000 statue of Baroness Thatcher. The defense was based on the defendant's right to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2002 07:44 AM
Real Change Requires the Preservation of the Status Quo The attempt to redefine "regime change" as "lack of regime change" is perhaps the most irritating of all the phony spinning and blustering that has come from this administration on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2002 05:08 PM
Quote of the day: Because of the technology and the heightened desperation of the world today, I think it's very possible that we are facing the first century that will complete itself without mankind--and that's not the future that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2002 01:15 PM
Mona Baker, the British academic who couldn't tell the difference between "boycott" and "purge," has surfaced once again. Professor Baker, the Times reveals, is engaged in a lively email correspondence with celebrity holocaust denier David Irving. Very little of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2002 12:25 PM
I'm anti-something, I know that... If you've read much of his weblog, you're probably aware that Brendan O'Neill feels he's too good for the anti-war movement. He's written several versions of this column over the past year. Allow me to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2002 12:58 PM
Scene Report Here's the real original Blogs of War, coming to you pretty much live from a Carlsbad Motel 6. We've always been a Motel 6 band. There are Super 8 bands. There are Red Roof Inn bands. There are...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2002 09:43 AM
Lott-eriorata Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute has this interesting perspective on the Trent Lott affair: The Founders' purpose in establishing the United States Senate was to elevate the characters of its members so that, following deliberation, it could act...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 12:56 PM
I can't remember what I was looking for, but shuffling through some of the myriad untidy stacks of papers that I have on every available surface that the wife hasn't complained about yet, I came across this letter. I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 08:51 AM
The Telegraph has published a version of Harold Pinter's notorious honorary degree acceptance speech at the University of Turin in November. Steven Den Beste really goes to town on it here and here. He sees Pinter's "paranoid anti-American rant" (and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 13, 2002 07:46 AM
Desperately Seeking a Clue I was going to try to make this a Lott-free day, but Krauthammer's Lott Must Go column is too good to pass up: This is not just the kind of eruption of moronic bias or racial...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 10:17 AM
Letter from America This Timothy Garton Ash column appears in the New York Times, but its intended audience is Europe, particularly those who can't fathom the American enthusiasm for the idea of toppling Saddam: What strikes me most, however, is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 12, 2002 08:31 AM
Andrew Sullivan on Lott: It seems to me that president Bush now has his Sister Souljah opportunity. Just as Clinton secured centrist backing when he repudiated the anti-white racism of Sister Souljah, so Bush needs to repudiate the anti-black racism...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 10:41 AM
Link of the Day Obviously. Oliver Willis's brilliant mock-up of what a Lott-Bush attack ad might look like. As one of the commenters says, it's not even slightly unfair. A first. (via Instantman, so you've probably already been there. That's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 09:30 AM
Apology dos and don'ts Wise words about how not to apologize, with illustrations drawn from life and current events, by Fritz Schrank. Saddam, Trent, take note. You know, as I've said before, I have no idea whether Trent Lott is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2002 09:13 AM
More Rope-a-dope The war on terrorism may be many things (if not much of a war these days.) Perhaps it's merely a clever pretext for decreasing public arts funding. Diabolical. (via Tim Blair.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 08:18 AM
All carrot, no stick As U.S. experts began to copy and comb through Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons of mass destruction program, the Bush administration moved yesterday to assure skittish allies that it does not intend to use the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 07:49 AM
I hope they teach this guy some history at Oxford "We have a different name for the war we're fighting now now we call it the war on terrorism, then they called it the war on communism," Mr. Boudin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2002 07:17 AM
Bomb Iraq Tapped has posted these snarky, satirical anti-war lyrics, to be sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands." They say its original inspiration was this Tom Tomorrow cartoon, and it was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2002 09:43 AM
Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war This New York Times magazine article about soul-searching among and inside American liberal hawks is worth a look. I guess I'd say I'm one, though I haven't felt at all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2002 07:31 AM
On this whole Trent Lotto-gate thing... If there's an American public figure I hold in lower esteem than Trent Lott, I can't think of who that might be. He is, as the saying goes, the worst his party has to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 01:52 PM
How 'bout that Neal Pollack? I've seen a few links to this floating around, but I never got around to reading it till now. When was the last time you read an attempt at political humor that was actually funny?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2002 07:31 AM
A Year Closer to Death Lot's of folks from the second wave of warbloggers have been noting, even celebrating, their "blog birthdays" recently. I'm not sure if mine counts, since I took a couple of months off. But for what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2002 08:49 AM
Trying not to freak out, here... I had to opt out of the blogosphere yesterday-- it's amazing how much stuff you miss from just one day. Yesterday, Bill Quick (from whom I shamelessly snagged many of the references in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 5, 2002 09:17 AM
Now the Swedes have a McDonalds of their own Bombs were found in three different Dutch IKEA outlets: Police in the Netherlands are searching all 10 outlets of the Ikea furniture chain in the country, after finding bombs in three...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 4, 2002 07:21 AM
Behold-- the anti-war movement! The Flying Pickets stood in front of KSTP Channel 5 from 12 noon until around 12:45. Two men held signs for traffic passing by to see. One held a large "Say No War with Iraq" lawn...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 3, 2002 08:37 AM
Bootless but Unbowed Moira Breen, always a reliable guide when it comes to sorting through the apparently unsortable, has zeroed in on what separates the mockers of the "religion of peace" platitude from the mockers of the mockers of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 01:12 PM
The age of the professor-thug shall be upon us... Read this terrific article by a Yale student on authoritarian assaults on free speech by tenured professors and the administrations that enable them. (via Instantman.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 10:01 AM
Andrew Sullivan notes this item about Kola Boof, a Sudanese black feminist writer, now in hiding in California, who has been condemned to death by beheading by a Sharia court in London. (That's globalization for you.) The death sentence was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 09:09 AM
Oy Vey, part deux Caught this snippet on CNN yesterday, part of a why-do-they-hate-us in Mombasa segment presented by Ben Wedeman. ("They" meaning worshippers interviewed at a Mombasa mosque, not the folks shouting "We Love America" and "al Qaeda go...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 2, 2002 07:46 AM
Who will boycott the boycotters? Damian Penny found this adorable "quote of the day" via Shari Stein: "I boycott everything that involves corporations," said Jennifer Durocher, a first-year anthropology and history student. "I think everything in this world should be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 05:13 PM
The Compleat Shut Upmanship No one is more strongly in favor of free speech than I am. However... John Leo identifies this and other "current anti-speech ploys" on campus. (via Bill Quick.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 02:18 PM
Kinsley Report I don't care how many times Michael Kinsley writes this column-- it's funny every time....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 10:35 AM
I have no interest at all in the inter-blog controversy over that Rittenhouse guy's decision to black out his links to every site with a Little Green Footballs link. I don't happen to agree with his assessment of LGF (for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 30, 2002 09:41 AM
Oy Vey Stephen Pollard has this Sky News report report: Just heard the ludicrous Abdel Bari Atwan, who Sky News persist in using as their Middle East 'expert', say this about the Kenyan attacks: "Many people have criticised Osama bin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 04:35 PM
Mark Steyn on Bush and the Saudi Princess: The fawning legions of ex-ambassadors to Riyadh have been all over the TV assuring us that, oh, no, al-Qaeda hate the House of Saud and want to overthrow it. But, interestingly, though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 09:23 AM
If you hate America enough, you'll believe just about anything I was halfway up the track that leads to the salt-mine at Taloqan, described by Marco Polo as producing the finest salt in the world, when an old man driving...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 29, 2002 08:47 AM
The War Begins? al Qaeda attacks Israelis for the first (known) time. Three suicide bombers blew themselves up in an Israel-owned hotel in Kenya; a "light plane" simultaneously dropped three "bombs" on the site; and at the same time, two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 07:56 AM
Another powerful editorial from Salman Rushdie, on the Miss World fatwa, "fanaticism as usual," and other recent milestones in "the wonderful world of Islam" (the quoted phrases are his, irony included): A couple of months ago I said that I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 28, 2002 06:46 AM
Mama mia! The man who attempted to hijack that Italian plane turns out to have been a would-be serial hijacker: It later emerged the man had a history of hijackings, raising questions about how he had managed to secure a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 27, 2002 10:57 AM
This is a couple of weeks old, but still worth a look. sp!ked's Mick Hume laments the lack of persuasive arguments on both sides of the war/anti-war divide and in the process comes up with this fine withering passage: For...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 07:40 PM
It turns out that Bill Wyman, the music critic, received a cease and desist letter from attorneys representing Bill Wyman, former bassist for the Rolling Stones, demanding that he stop using the name Bill Wyman: Journalist Bill Wyman was asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 05:19 PM
MEMRI Motel For what it's worth, MEMRI has posted a summary of the contents of an interview with an "unidentified Iraqi official" from a London-based Arabic language daily newspaper. The u.I.o. boasts of previous occasions where Iraq "did not hesitate"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 03:21 PM
The man knows everything Noting my mention of a recent referral from a search for "famous quotes relating to goats," Dr. Weevil supplies one from Suetonius's Life of Caligula. As he says, it's not nearly as famous as it deserves...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 26, 2002 07:29 AM
TNR's Jason Zengerle on the long over-due "Saudi-gate" brouhaha initiated by that Newsweek article: As any connoisseur of the Sunday shows knows, guests and discussion topics are determined days in advance of the actual shows. Usually by Friday afternoon, the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 11:54 AM
Could it be for real? Who knows? I'm sure there will be those who will make a great deal of hay over the rhetorical similarity of some of it to Chomskyite Indymedia-type "anti-Imperialist" claptrap. I'll leave it to someone else...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 25, 2002 07:44 AM
This post by Josh Marshall begins as a sort of comment on Krauthammer's recent by-the-numbers piece on the "left-wing idiocy" of Bill Moyers, Paul Krugman, et al. (Well, not entirely by the numbers: this one includes a prescription for Thorazine--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 02:45 PM
Defining Victory Down Way down. Mark Steyn's latest, much-linked column is entertaining as always, and as usual, there's some substance between the one-liners: For over a year now, nothing has been asked of Muslims, at home or abroad: you can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 24, 2002 07:51 AM
Forward-thinking Atavism Here we go again: Miss World contestants are preparing to fly to London, amid criticism over the decision to host the beauty pageant in the UK... The UK's Islamic Liberation party has condemned the contest as offensive to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 08:39 AM
The Irony Olympics Eric Alterman faults Andrew Sullivan for failing to "engage with the work of liberal writers" like Paul Krugman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 23, 2002 08:21 AM
No business like show business I'm not as up-to-date as I ought to be on the activities of aging British Socialists, so I wasn't even aware that Tony Benn has a "highly rated one man show" called Free at Last...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 04:46 PM
A good material breach is hard to find, as TNR's Ryan Lizza explains: This week's international debate over the definition of material breach is a harbinger of things to come. In fact, the debate over paragraph eight will be nothing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 01:42 PM
This Victor Davis Hanson column, like every other VDH column, will be linked to by everyone hither and yon. He makes a convincing case that the US-Iraq war, should anyone ever manage to start it, will probably wind up as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 11:01 AM
Topple Saddam at any cost, say Iraqi Kurds As well they might. John Weidner has posted this article from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (not available on-line.) Here's an excerpt: "I want him dead, even if I or my family lose all...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 10:14 AM
Cops Take a look at Bill Quick's close-reading and commentary on this Reuters report about Colin Powell's latest televised statements on Iraq. I think he's right. It certainly looks as though the administration is laying the groundwork for a retreat....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 22, 2002 08:50 AM
Down with beauty! The Islamic anti-Miss World rioting in Nigeria has now killed fifty people and injured another two hundred. In Thursday's rioting, more than 50 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death and 200 were seriously injured, Ijewere...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 03:25 PM
Well done, boys. Al-Qaida leader Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the network's chief of operations in the Persian Gulf, has been captured, senior U.S. government officials said Thursday. Al-Nashiri, a suspected mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in October 2000, was taken...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 03:11 PM
So why isn't Prince Charles in jail? That's the obvious facetious question, sure to be asked over and over in connection with the case of Robin Page, the Telegraph writer who was arrested and jailed for saying that "the rural...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 02:21 PM
"It's time to save journalism from its saviors," is the sub-head of this inspiring polemic cum book review from Matt Welch. Monopoly newspapering in the U.S. is an idiosyncratic -- and extremely lucrative -- business, conducted largely by a small...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 21, 2002 10:43 AM
Zero Tolerance Watch The Iraqi government has accepted without protest the right of UN weapons inspectors to make unannounced checks on "special" sites belong to President Saddam Hussein, an issue that helped derail the inspections in the 1990s, UN officials...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 20, 2002 12:21 PM
Steven Chapman has posted an inventory of the thirty minutes of new material in the Lord of the Rings Special Edition DVD. I'm going to have to buy one now, though I will always harbor a deep, bitter, murderous resentment...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 07:00 PM
The Quotable Mr. Murray To my astonishment, Iain Murray has brought "the Emperor's New Clothes" back to life as a meaningful (read "not boring") political allegory. The immediate subject is the folly of the social engineering schemes fashionable in the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 06:38 PM
This article in the Daily Californian (on Berkeley's civil defense preparedness) contains this nugget of brilliant analysis: at least one expert said terrorists probably won't bother targeting Berkeley. "Berkeley is very anti-war, so it would seem a very unlikely target,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 04:03 PM
Grab hold of my talons, Gandalf... Awhile back Andrew Sullivan identified what he described as a relatively new American political category: There's a new group of people out there who are socially liberal but also foreign policy realists, especially among...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 19, 2002 10:58 AM
All Talk? Well said, Bill. The Bush administration has been quite successful at leaving the impression, despite little evidence, that decisive action is always just around the corner. Running around saying "this time we mean business" is all very well,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 18, 2002 09:18 AM
"People were caught up in the times, and we all did things then that we wouldn't dream of doing today..." When all else fails, former 60s radicals and their would-be apologists always resort to a variation upon this dubious theme....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 04:27 PM
The Worst of the Worst A couple of readers have emailed to ask for more info on Ulrike Meinhof and the Baader-Meinhof gang/Red Army Faction. This site should tell you all you need to know about the German counter-culture's w....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 11:27 AM
The Case of the Missing Baader-Meinhof Brains Here's more on the story of Ulrike Meinhof's brain that I noted a few days ago. One of Meinhof's twin daughters then traced her mother's brain to a formaldehyde jar held at the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 17, 2002 09:24 AM
Mind the Gap Three men have been charged over a alleged plot to release cyanide gas in the London Underground, say police. They are believed to be from either Tunisia or Morocco. Reports say the suspects are part of a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 16, 2002 01:12 PM
My Inner Monster The current system of British education emphasizes the inculcation of prepackaged attitudes and opinion over the Platonic goal of cultivating the ability to think for oneself, according to this interesting spiked column, which is also the springboard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2002 11:39 AM
More on the INS Check out the comment section on this post from Matt Welch for some horror stories that are far, far worse than mine-- so far, anyway. (I've really gotta get me one of those comment-routine doohickies like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 15, 2002 09:25 AM
"They come in here, these mods, asking for animal paws to hang on their scooters, and then while your back's turned a nice bit of skunk vanishes up their knickers..." As you can see, last night we rented Smashing Time....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 01:57 PM
They Saved Ulrike's Brain It's creepy yet/hence fascinating: The brain of Red Army Faction leader Ulrike Meinhof, preserved for 26 years since her suicide and used for research, will be returned to her family for burial at her twin daughters'...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 14, 2002 09:06 AM
The Robot Legislature Speaks Many have noted the amusing tendency for the news media to refer, without apparent irony or qualification, to members of Iraq's fake parliament as "law-makers" or "legislators." I wasn't going to say anything, but I do...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 06:35 PM
Twisted David Blunkett attempts to explain why the British government would like to abolish key elements of English common law. He begins: Sometimes one small word can tell us more than a lengthy speech. Among the many thousands of words...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 02:07 PM
Joshua Micah Marshall joins the chorus of commentators who see the Democrats' lack of credibility on Iraq and national defense as key to the thoroughness of their recent defeat. (It's Salon "premium," which means that those who are too cheap/sensible...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 01:30 PM
Of Hawks and Hippies Dennis Ross, in today's Washington Post, spells out exactly how Saddam might be allowed to slip out of the trap, avoid a full-scale attack, and continue his surreptitious WMD programs: Many have said that Hussein is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 12, 2002 10:22 AM
Moira Breen asks the key questions with regard to the recently-Instapundited editorial about the $500-a-plate fund-raising dinner for Gerry Adams in New York: "Who are these cretins? And, fools though they may have been, shouldn't they bloody know better by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 01:47 PM
These Days are Ours There's this episode of Happy Days where Richie is being harrassed by some biker hooligans. One of them wants to "rumble" at Arnold's, and Richie is terrified. Fonzie gives him some sound advice on deterrence, based...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 11, 2002 07:16 AM
"Any child can see through that, but many adults can't..." I haven't read Christopher Hitchens's book on Orwell, but this interview about it is quite interesting. Favorite quote: I think Hannah Arendt said that one of the great achievements of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 01:04 PM
First Amendment Fetishists According to this report, pointed out by Bill Quick, the Council of Europe has finally adopted the long-discussed measure to criminalize internet "hate speech," including "hyperlinks to pages that contain offensive content." There's an interesting exchange about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 10:09 AM
If you ignore him, he'll go away... ...but where's the fun in that? I'd say Ron Rosenbaum grants far too much importance to Gore Vidal's latest round of nut-job conspiracy theorizing, but there's a lot of amusing and satisfying rhetoric...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on November 10, 2002 08:03 AM
Sickos The mind-numbing parade of depravity of the Palestinian terrorist organizers and their willing executioners continues apace. I usually find that, try as I might, I have no comment on this or that latest outrageous photo, interview, sermon or mission,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on August 2, 2002 09:23 AM
The Matt Report Okay, now it really does look like Matt Welch is "back." Hell of back, as the East Bay kids used to say-- lots of great posts on Steve Earle, Monrovia, the filthy streets of San Francisco, Iraq...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 29, 2002 12:26 PM
Howard Owens takes a good long look at the "American police state" nightmare scenarios beloved by conspiracy theorists on the Left and on the Right. Regardless of which party is in control, and no matter who the president happens to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 28, 2002 12:44 PM
This is a couple of days old now, but worth a look anyway: Ian Buruma tackles the claim (raised by Steven and Hilary Rose in their recent attempt to defend the anti-Israel academic boycott brought to the fore by Mona...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 26, 2002 08:51 AM
Ben Sheriff says these paragraphs (from the Times-- link requires coughing up sixty bucks!) are the funniest he's seen all year: "It is always wonderful to watch a person raise himself beyond the level of others all around him with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 24, 2002 11:21 AM
The whole Steve Earle pseudo-controversy is pretty trivial in and of itself, but it has spurred some interesting blogospheric commentary on songwriting, art, politics and what have you. Eric Olsen has a pretty comprehensive survey of the spontaneous Earle-related blog-burst,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 23, 2002 02:12 PM
Just a bit more on Steve Earle-gate Matt Welch has broken his vow of silence to deliver this persuasive defense of the "fat socialist hillbilly". (He also has this great post about Ari Fleischer and TV graphics reform--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 07:01 PM
Speaking of country music singer-songwriter lefties, Steve Earle has apparently found, within his addled soul, yet another deep end into which to slip (via Instantman): American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh is glorified and called Jesus-like in a country-rock song...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 11:07 AM
As nasty as he wants to be... At this point, I'm officially bored by Brendan O'Neill's periodic anti-blogosphere temper tantrums, as well as by the predictable responses to them. (Warning: this one will be pretty boring, too.) He only does...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 22, 2002 12:06 AM
What Spain could teach us about island grabbing is the headline of this interesting item about Parsley Island, Gibraltar and the venerable and continuing tradition of gunboat diplomacy. "Us" means, of course, Great Britain, but there may be other worthy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 20, 2002 11:05 AM
Entropy Ken Layne says yesterday was dull, and has the links to back it up. Meanwhile, in this little corner of dullsville, a letter came pouring in, demanding to know why I didn't post anything yesterday. Question: am I OK?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 19, 2002 10:01 AM
Here's an article based on an interview with Mona Baker's husband, Ken, in which he says: "we are just ordinary people. Neither of us has any real political allegiances, we have no religion, no creed, nothing at all... We didn't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 16, 2002 11:51 AM
Oh come on, Eric: on the topic of Ms. Coulter, I do not think it impossible or necessarily unlikely that were she a leftist, Mr. Ashcroft would seek to imprison her for regular endorsements of mass violence and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 12, 2002 11:32 AM
Astounding idiocy... ...from Patrick Bateson, the provost of King's College, Cambridge (via Instantman.) And I'm not easily astounded. Here's how Professor Bateson defends Mona Baker's purge of Israeli scholars: "Always," he said, "science is set in social contexts." As an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 11, 2002 10:31 AM
In case you missed it yesterday, here's Victor Davis Hanson's latest excellent essay on "our friends the Saudis" and the questionable advisability of attempting to preserve the status quo in the Middle East for the sake of oil. Stability schmability,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 01:34 PM
Mark Steyn engagingly covers all the bases in this column on the seeming inability of authorities to draw the obvious conclusions about the LAX terrorism. He also makes this point: let's take the Feds at their word when they insist...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 10:39 AM
Saudi diplomacy Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi ambassador to Britain who published that poem gloryifying suicide bombers awhile back, is at it again, reaffirming his praise of suicide "martyrs" and claiming "this is a war of occupation, far more severe than...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 10, 2002 09:12 AM
"Criticism of Israel isn't necessarily anti-Semitism," the British left-liberal commentariat never tire of pointing out. But what about when it is? Donald Macintyre, commenting in the Independent on the case of the British academic (Mona Baker) who fired two Israelis...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2002 03:08 PM
Another good catch... ...by Moira Breen. Moira says everything that needs to be said about this remarkable set of consecutive paragraphs from a Reuters article on the recent study that found that "globalization has helped the poor." But here they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 9, 2002 09:45 AM
Mark Steyn on the Establishment clause: The founders were men of God: they just didn't think the government should be in the business of approving and licensing one particular denomination over all others. Their view prevailed so successfully that two...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 6, 2002 11:50 AM
Daniel Pipes revisits the "simulation of Islamic culture" public school curriculum that was such a hot topic on talk radio a few months back. (It's news again because a public school in California is now being sued by parents over...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 3, 2002 01:41 PM
The what the hell is the matter with these people? file is getting pretty thick: A Pakistani tribal council ordered an 18-year-old girl to be gang-raped in order to punish her family after her brother was seen walking with a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 2, 2002 11:37 AM
Wow, they really are suicidal... Fatah calls for attacks on US targets: Groups affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement yesterday called upon all Palestinian organizations, including the Islamic movements, to attack Zionist and American targets everywhere in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 05:01 PM
The Natives Voters are Restless Palestinian Jobless Storm Arafat's Gaza Headquarters: Thousands of banner-waving Palestinians marched on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Gaza offices Monday, protesting the lack of jobs or financial support for the unemployed. About 4,000 demonstrators, many accompanied...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 11:25 AM
Joe Katzman has a great column on "4th Generation Warfare" up on TCS. This is nicely put: As we've seen recently, big-ticket military items aren't always the ones that matter, which puts the U.S. military procurement culture at a big...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 11:07 AM
30 Days to a Mushier Vocabulary The word "Oriental" has been banned in the state of Washington. The state senator who sponsored the bill, one Paul Shin, provides a useful bit of semantic history: the word "Oriental" was first used...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on July 1, 2002 10:57 AM
Who is Steven Hatfill? This American Prospect article about the shadowy bio-weapons scientist whose apartment was recently searched in the anthrax investigation raises as many questions as it answers. Many of these details are intriguing, particularly the Rhodesian paramilitary connection--...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 28, 2002 11:34 AM
"You Americans really love a lawsuit, don't you?" said my young British wife, as we watched the feeble-minded fellow who brought the pledge of allegiance case making the rounds on TV last night. "What a waste of time." Especially since,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2002 11:41 AM
Fudge Jeff Jacoby has the right idea on Israel-Palestine: peace requires a drastic reform of Palestinian culture which, unfortunately, cannot begin without a crushing military defeat. He seems to think that this is Bush's idea as well, which is strange...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 27, 2002 09:52 AM
We've still got an appeasement problem... Iain Murray points out this wonderfully clarifying column by Michael Gove, on Palestinian "desperation," the suicide-bombing ethos, and the "folly of the West": This ideology of death is not then the product of hope...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 26, 2002 08:50 AM
"A student movement is not just a student movement," writes Todd Gitlin in Mother Jones. "It's a student movement." Glad you cleared that up, Todd. Seriously, though, this is yet another good treatment of the campus anti-Semitism phenomenon by a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 01:13 PM
It's tough being a Marxist The always-provocative Brendan O'Neill explains why he is against just about everything. Down with human rights!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 24, 2002 12:41 PM
But did they use a mail truck? Have you heard about Mohamed Hammoud and his brother Chawki? (Yeah, that's right: Chawki.) These guys established permanent resident status through sham marriages, and set up a "scheme" which involved buying cigarettes in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 07:11 PM
More Padilla weirdness According to this Times of London report, some FBI officials believe Jose Padilla was aware that he was going to be apprehended when he landed in Chicago and may even have deliberately contrived his own arrest: Padilla,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 03:10 PM
punkrockbaby.com "Dont leave your your child's musical taste to chance - indoctrinate now" is the motto of this compilation of punk rock for babies, billed as "a collection of punk classics in a lullaby style." I don't know about the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 11:42 AM
Root Causes Does poverty and poor education cause terrorism? Of course not. But here's an interesting exploration of the "economics and education of suicide bombers" and of various ways that survey research and other statistical data can be used to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 22, 2002 09:30 AM
Having it Both Ways Matt Welch comments on this piece by Nat Hentoff on the putative return of the bad old days of COINTELPRO: There were many good reasons for the reforms introduced back then on intelligence & law enforcement...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2002 02:52 PM
Ask and Receive Yesterday I asked which Middle Eastern country, and which shadowy "targeted organization," were being referred to in this report on the allegations of espionage by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. HD "Travelling Shoes" Miller responds: Regarding Sibel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 20, 2002 10:46 AM
Moles in the FBI? It certainly seems that way. Wow. According to the Washington Post, a former FBI wire-tap translator named Sibel Edmonds "raised suspicions about a co-worker's connections to a group under surveillance." At the time, these suspicions appear...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 11:58 AM
Mohammad al-Ghoul, the aptly-named maniac responsible for the latest Jerusalem bus bombing, was a two-time self-detonation failure before he finally managed to get his act together as a mass murderer. We know this because he said so in a suicide...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 08:21 AM
Ken Adelman says that Bush has indeed "gone wobbly": Around all the Washington harrumphing, I detect no serious actions to liberate Iraq and rid us of thenumber onethreat poised against the American people. Why not? I cant imagine. Every day...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 19, 2002 07:52 AM
Mick Hume of spiked has an excellent essay (in the New Statesman, of all places) on how yesterday's "socialism of fools" (anti-Semitism) has given way to today's "anti-Imperialism of fools" (anti-Israel-ism.) I don't agree with his peremptory dismissal of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 04:05 PM
Stop coddling Pakistan, says Lawrence Kaplan of The New Republic: The Bush team needs a new road map for South Asia. U.S. officials readily concede that if war breaks out on the subcontinent it will be because India invades to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 10:53 AM
Hamas strikes again. Another high-intensity bus bombing. This time the bus was full of school children and office workers. 19 of them are dead, and over 50 injured. The bomber, the rather appropriately-named Mohmmad al Ghoul, boarded the bus with...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 08:30 AM
Here's a report (via Rantburg) claiming that Egyptian authorities "foiled an attempt by Al Qaida to forge cooperation between Islamic insurgents in Egypt and the United States." The al Qaeda agent? Jose Padilla. Arab diplomatic sources said the attempt was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 18, 2002 07:44 AM
It's a Carry On Explosion!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 17, 2002 11:09 AM
Speaking of Gary Farber, he's "back," with a vengeance. Lots of great posts over the last few days. He has some excellent comments on "one way the "hard left" has a large thread of evil running through it." (This is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2002 11:59 AM
Soft Tacos Jose Padilla may not have been a major player in al Qaeda's war on America, but one thing seems certain: the south Florida environment that "produced" him is a hotbed of Islamist extremism, as this Washington Post piece...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 16, 2002 08:21 AM
I think it's safe to say that Midwest Express Airlines has managed to avoid even the appearance of profiling in its security screening procedures. Feel safer? (via DailyPundit-- welcome back, Bill!)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 14, 2002 12:11 PM
Mark Steyn comments on cultural sensitivity and Johnelle Bryant's encounter with Mohamed Atta: Ms. Bryant has come forward now because she thinks "it's very vital that the Americans realize that when these people come to the United States, they don't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 07:41 PM
Progress in the Richard Reid investigation: French police detained five people for questioning in the Paris area Wednesday as part of the investigation into suspected shoe-bomber Richard C. Reid. Two of those being held are Pakistani and the other three...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 01:49 PM
More on Padilla. Al Muhajir's journey to the Middle East may have begun at two mosques in Florida's Broward County. Darul Uloom Institute was one of the places where he attended Saturday morning courses in 1995. "He used to dress...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 13, 2002 10:17 AM
Dirty Bomb Backlash! There has been some backtracking by administration honchos about the seriousness of the Jose Padilla's "dirty bomb" threat. Ashcroft "overstated" the dirty bomb danger, as this USA Today report puts it, quoting Paul Wolfowitz: "I don't think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 12, 2002 07:21 PM
Answers are trickling in to some of the questions I was wondering about yesterday concerning Jose "Abdullah" Padilla. There's still some confusion about the timeline of his association with radical Islamism and al Qaeda. According to this article, he converted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2002 06:23 PM
Muhajir Implications... Joe Katzman has put together a thorough run-down of the implications of the Padilla-Muhajir dirty bomb plot with regard to the al Qaeda situation. As for the civil liberties situation, I agree with this Washington Post editorial that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 11, 2002 10:56 AM
Steven "Daddy Warblogs" Chapman vs. Robert Fisk, again. The Daddy wins, again....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 04:55 PM
This Fox News report on the dirty bomb plot has more details, plus a photo of Jose "Abdullah al Muhajir" Padilla, a 31-year old New York native raised in Chicago. Two other conspirators are in custody in Pakistan in connection...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 04:12 PM
There's very little detail available on Abdullah al Mujahir (a.k.a. Jose Padilla), the American citizen who is accused of being the operative behind a foiled al Qaeda dirty-bomb plot. Like the British "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, he apparently converted to Islam...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 10, 2002 11:02 AM
We hates Imperialism! We hates it! Brendan O'Neill has made it quite clear that he would like to see an end to "Imperialism," by which he means all "Western interference in other states' affairs." Bit of a lost cause, but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 9, 2002 10:14 AM
The corrosive sub-culture within New Labour is probably not all that different from that of any political party in power (though I'm sure they have their own distinct style.) This op-ed in the Scotsman runs down the British government's latest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 8, 2002 09:05 AM
Dangerous Maniac Alert Have you seen the piece about how Mohamed Atta and three of the other jihadi-jackers applied for a government loan to finance a "crop dusting business?" It's unbelievable. "He wanted to finance a twin-engine six-passenger aircraft ...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 7, 2002 10:11 AM
Trolls and juvenilia in a barrel Megan McArdle takes the Warbloggerwatch kids' troll bait, with predictably devastating results: she can write circles around practically anybody, of course, and these guys don't stand a chance. The reason that we're worried about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 12:28 PM
As Richard Tofel points out, there's a lot in the idea that the most effective way for the Democrats to challenge GWB would be to "become the true War Party, the clear-eyed hawks--in essence, to outflank Mr. Bush on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 11:30 AM
This Wobbly Stuff Pejman Yousefzahda runs through all the reasons why taking on Saddam is a "no brainer." It's a good summary. Some have hailed the column as a response to those who worry that a "wobbly" Bush administration won't...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 6, 2002 12:30 AM
Another great Guardian moment (via Peter Briffa): The US constitution is a uniquely powerful document, but whether it has really done anything for the cause of freedom is open to debate. It accommodated slavery for longer than European states, turned...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2002 08:09 PM
Brendan O'Neill has a point that quibbling over the precise number of Afghan civilian casualties has little to do with "principled, political argument." Whether or not the US campaign in Afghanistan was justified does not turn on whether Marc Herold's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 4, 2002 09:28 AM
The Smoking Spam Of course Slobodan Milosevic knew about Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. But wouldn't you think that they'd be able to come up with more solid evidence than the fact that Human Rights Watch sent spam to his email...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 3, 2002 11:14 AM
Get Out of Delhi, Baby, Go "Diplomatic sources" say that the looming India-PAK conflict could very well lead to a nuclear exchange. Well, duh. Diplomatic sources insisted that such a doomsday scenario was "very real". Neither the Indian nor Pakistani...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 12:21 PM
Out of the Mouths of Belgians Not All Euro-crats are anti-Israel. Tal G links to this interesting article from the Jerusalem Post about small group of members of the European Parliament (50 out of 626) who support Israel: "For us,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on June 1, 2002 11:07 AM
There's not all that much to Humanities professor Paul Gottfried's much-blogged Spectator article on American anti-European sentiment. Loads of rhetoric, snide asides, very little substance, no discernable argument-- in other words, extremely difficult to comment on. (Though I daresay the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 31, 2002 12:52 PM
What about that flight simulator? FBI officials said a ''restricted'' Middle Eastern country attempted to buy a flight simulator before the attacks. That attempt failed, said the officials, who would not identify the country or say when the attempt was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 11:14 PM
Mark Steyn asks "does political correctness kill?" He answers the question by posing another question: why didn't the FBI follow up on the famous "Phoenix memo" about radical Islamists attending flight schools? Three weeks ago, FBI director Mueller was asked...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 11:42 AM
Joe Katzman's Blog Burst experiment has succeeded in generating massive bloggage on the San Francisco State anti-Semitic riot situation. Overwhelming....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 30, 2002 12:14 AM
Here's a very fine essay (via 64.247.33.250) by the redoubtable Paul Berman, on the strange "new wind" of anti-Jewish sentiment. As Berman demonstrates (by parsing out four examples of contemporary discourse) the most disturbing thing about the "new mood" is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 07:54 AM
Tick, tick, tick... Even as international pressure mounted on Islamabad to stop cross-border terrorism, a senior Pakistani official has said infiltration into India is conditional to New Delhi taking steps to resolve the Kashmir issue and ending the status quo....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 29, 2002 06:49 AM
Oh, dear God... Cheese-flavored Yasser Arafat potato chips five cents a bag. Vendors report brisk sales of the new product. The maker of the chips says it donates five cents 25 pisaters to the "Palestinian cause" for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2002 07:32 PM
Thanks to Iain Murray and the other kind folks who expressed sympathy and encouragement regarding the INS experience. There's always one more river to cross, but it appears that we made it over this one at least. I'm sure whatever...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 28, 2002 04:02 PM
More on Glorious Irrelevance Here's a long and detailed essay (via Moira Breen) from the always provocative Robert Kagan, on the reasons for the differences between European and American "strategic culture." It's the least anti-European argument in favor of American...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 26, 2002 08:03 PM
I don't agree with everything Roger Scruton says in this piece on the "tyranny of the majority." (Democracy doesn't seem to be doing so well in Europe these days, but I'm pretty sure the problem isn't that it is insufficiently...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2002 11:50 AM
Diane "Letter from Gotham" E. once speculated that Andrew Sullivan might have some kind of "B-chip" in his head which prevented him from uttering anything less than favorable about GWB. If so, the administration's backpedaling on Iraq appears to have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 24, 2002 10:44 AM
Even among the many recent contenders in the Catholic Church's bulging file of disastrous press-clippings, this headline has to win some kind of prize: Priest Pleads Guilty to Making Date-Rape Drug...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 11:00 PM
More on the ever more disturbing India-PAK situation. Steven den Beste has come up with an (unfortunately) perfectly plausible nightmare scenario for how the conflict might go from conventional to nuclear. And Suman Palit continues to frighten the dickens out...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 10:51 PM
That's our Tom: The ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, Tom Lantos, has asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to conduct a formal probe into the operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency in the territories prior...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:26 PM
The India-PAK situation, still hotting up: Pakistani troops attack Indian Kashmir village, Britain withdraws 150 diplomatic staff because of terrorist threats. And here's a report on Musharraf's "jehadi plan" from the Hindustan Times (via Rantburg): A new Pakistani jehadi group,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:17 PM
TAPped gives Alterman the thumbs-up. "Here's to a new wave of liberal, edited blogging." Be still my heart....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 22, 2002 12:59 AM
India and Pakistan move one step further toward the unthinkable... I hate to say it, but I think Josh Trevino is probably right about the impending India-PAK war (this is from post #1 on May 20-- scroll down to "holy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 07:02 PM
Steven den Beste has some trenchant comments on that David Clark column I was complaining about last week: Europeans have always tried to concentrate power. Everyone important in Europe has always agreed about this. The only argument has been who,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 05:38 PM
Meet the anti-Andrew I expect every last blogger to note the irony that infamous anti-blog attack dog Eric Alterman now has a blog, on the MSNBC website. (I found out about it through Instantman, for the record.) Alterman continues the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 12:31 PM
Michael Gove has another superb column, likening the EU-niks of today to the Manchu-niks of old. They really are Mandarins! The current trajectory of European political development is driven by elites who, unlike Americas political leadership, find the moral burden...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 10:53 AM
The latest news from Roman Britain......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 21, 2002 09:54 AM
A Guardianian Awakens... Decidedly un-Guardian-like words from Guardianian Peter Preston: Can Spain and Britain, best of friends, settle a tiny trauma over Gibraltar? Probably not, on present form. Can the ticking clock of EU enlargement bring a little peace to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 11:26 AM
"Imagine how awful it would be if there were a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. It'd be just like the last 2,000 years all over again." (via Ben Sheriff.)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 10:56 AM
David Warren is in fine form once again, poking holes in the "demography is destiny" argument: My Palestinian correspondents -- I actually have a few -- make two points repeatedly. The first is to blame all their economic failures on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 09:55 AM
Guardian to The Western World: Give Up Madeleine Bunting manages to turn the lynching of Daniel Pearl, the bombing of the French technicians in Karachi, and the threat of a July 4th attack on a US nuclear facility into an...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 20, 2002 09:34 AM
That quasi-pogrom-esque SF State "demonstration" (that anti-Semitism is alive and well and living at our major universities) has been extremely well-covered by Meryl Yourish and Joe Katzman. Glenn Reynolds's new FoxNews column ties it all together: If it is not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 11:35 AM
Steven "Daddy Warblogs" Chapman has responded courteously to a few of my questions about his explanation of European anti-Israel sentiment in terms of collective psychology. He may be right about the "transference." Admiration of history's losers and solidarity with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 09:05 AM
You can learn a lot from a government form... There's a $255 charge (plus a fingerprinting fee) for filing form I-485, which you need to file to register your alien spouse once the marriage has taken place. I'm not sure...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 16, 2002 12:10 AM
Pickers? An animal rights organization wants Austin High School to stop using the nickname ``Packers.'' The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals contends the southern Minnesota school's nickname is offensive and should be replaced. Austin is the home of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 14, 2002 08:06 AM
Holy Smokes! Matt Welch's latest venture into tip-jar rattling yielded 61 donations. I think I recall him saying he averaged around 12,000 hits per day. Theoretically, then, at that rate, if I do this right, I should be able to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 04:57 PM
I haven't read the newly-published Congo diaries of Che Guevara (and, frankly, it's pretty unlikely that I ever will-- you know how it is): so I can't comment on whether Cynthia Grenier's characterization of it as a picture of "the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 01:33 PM
Cognitive Dissonance? Daddy Warblogs expertly dissects three editorials from the Independent's Argument section. No surprises: it's pretty messy in there. If you're a fan of the Brit-lefty-barrelling genre (and who isn't?) it doesn't get much better than this. At the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 13, 2002 12:42 AM
Three cheers for Lt. Col Tom Chicken, commander of Operation Snipe!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 11:49 AM
Funniness I'm pretty sure this odious piece in yesterday's Independent was intended as a bit of light-hearted humor-- it's often hard to tell with the English, but their unintentional humor is usually much funnier than this. What is clear is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 11, 2002 08:51 AM
The Pim Fortuyn case gets curiouser and curiouser: Three election candidates from the party of murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn have been moved to a safe house. Police say they moved the LPF candidates after finding plans of their and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 03:52 PM
"Call it Sham-nesty International, an apologist for terror," writes Margaret Wente of Canada's Globe and Mail. In its report, Amnesty International criticizes Canada for sometimes being on the wrong side. One example it gives is that we voted against a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 10, 2002 12:43 PM
Reuters and "terrorism," again: A blast tore through a Victory Day parade in southern Russia on Thursday, killing at least 29 people, including seven children. Police said a remote-controlled mine hidden in bushes exploded as a military band surrounded by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 10:51 AM
There has already been a great deal withering commentary on Chris Patten's feeble whinging in response to George Will's column on European anti-Semitism, but, when it comes to commenting witheringly, nobody does it better than Moira Breen: "he must indeed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 9, 2002 12:37 AM
Ben Sheriff notes that the "dossier" on Arafat's direct involvement in terrorism is up on the IDF site: here's the index and here's the stuff about the Arafat/PA financing of terrorist activity. Also on Ben's site is a sensible response...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2002 11:17 AM
Here's a nice essay on "the big lie" about Pim Fortuyn by Adam Curry (yeah, the MTV guy-- he lives in Holland, and has been chronicling the story on his blog.) via Instantman....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 8, 2002 09:20 AM
Today is an INS day (which could well mean that tonight will be a drinking night) so there probably won't be much space for blogging. I assure you, no irony is intended here: if you haven't yet seen Michael Gove's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 7, 2002 01:41 PM
New Terror Alert issued in Europe: Le Journal du Dimanche reports Sunday that Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network is preparing to kidnap hundreds of people throughout Europe over the next few days. The aim of the operation would...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 6, 2002 08:34 AM
Love, Repression, and Drama Interesting psychological profile of Saddam Hussein in Time, though it's no great to surprise to learn that his quest for nuclear weapons is bound up with with his grandiosity and desire to emulate Stalin. The incidental...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 5, 2002 01:25 PM
Two of those people... Nick Denton writes of a familiar experience, the sort of conversation you have all the time when you live in a place like Berkeley: A friend was in town from the UK this weekend, and rehearsed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 4, 2002 12:50 PM
"I would not sell a man a hamburger if I thought my buns were stale."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 12:50 PM
Mark Steyn, once again, rules OK: For Goran Persson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, the point of the EU is that it can be a counterbalance, a moderating influence on those wacky Americans. But, for a moderating influence, its remarkably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 2, 2002 09:39 AM
Hamas accepts the Friedman/Saudi plan I'm not sure what to make of this article from Sunday's SF Chronicle, which is based on an interview with Ismail Abu Shanab, a member of Hamas's "executive committee." I haven't seen it reported anywhere...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on May 1, 2002 09:04 AM
Norwegian Blogger has spent quite a bit of his valuable time on this MST3K parody. It's a novel way of commenting on the much-blogged remarks of Arab Psychiatric Association chairman Adel "Bush is Retarded" Sadeq, and it's funny. Check it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 05:58 PM
Christopher Caldwell of the Weekly Standard makes a valuable contribution to the discussion on the current wave of European "Judeophobia." If you're interesed in "the real reason the French don't think they have a problem with anti-Semitism, and the reason...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 11:34 AM
Cockburn Update Somehow I missed it when it first went up, but here's Franklin Foer's piece on Alexander Cockburn and his recent round of cagey anti-Semitic conspiracy-theorizing (discussed here and here.) Foer gets to the heart of the matter here:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 30, 2002 09:08 AM
Marriage is hard. That's what married people always say whenever they find out you're joining their ranks. I'm sure they know what they're talking about, but it really doesn't seem all that difficult. All you need is a girl, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 29, 2002 10:26 AM
Were war crimes committed at Jenin? Robert N. Hochman of the New Republic says "yes," and he's got a point: All civilized people agree on the premise of the Palestinian leadership's argument about Jenin. There is a vast moral difference...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 05:11 PM
Gary Farber has posted some very kind words about the Blogs of War on his great Amygdala blog. By way of returning the favor, I'll say that Amygdala is definitely on my "A" list of commentators. Here's an example of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 12:19 PM
The Case for Alarmism Ron Rosenbaum's follow-up to his previous article on Euro-anti-Semitism (mentioned below) is an excellent summary of the alarming signs coming from Europe these days. I'm still not sure that Le Pen's electoral "success" is all that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 25, 2002 11:01 AM
Nick Denton makes a good case for the "build a fence" solution to the Israel/Palestine dispute. Summary: withdraw from most of the occupied territories annex land around Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem abandon settlements beyond the boundary forget...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 24, 2002 08:54 AM
All the Way We watched a bit of the anti-Israel protest on C-SPAN over the weekend. It's difficult to believe anyone could ever be persuaded by a chant like "we don't care what you say, Intifada all the way." The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2002 05:57 PM
This just in: Palestinian Vows End to Cooperation-- Israelis Won't Be Secure In Territories, Official Says Meanwhile, there was yet another lynching of "collaborators": With a three-week curfew lifted in Ramallah and no Palestinian police on the streets, three Palestinians...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 23, 2002 05:26 PM
"Criticism of Israel isn't Necessarily Anti-Semitism" I suppose the British Left and the American mainstream will never understand each other when it comes to anti-Semitism. What it boils down to is this: we think their rhetoric sounds anti-Semitic; they think...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 22, 2002 10:34 AM
Plan 9 Once again, Steyn "gets it" (as Sullivan would say): I'm sure the Middle East can always use another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 19, 2002 11:21 AM
Pacifist Speech The great Doc Searls says that "some of the best blogs (most well-reasoned, funny, wise, artfully written) are what we call warblogs." He hotlinks to this particular warblog as an example. Unless there's some mistake, I'd say that's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 18, 2002 08:47 AM
I'm sure Michael Kelly is right about "what Bush expects" in the Middle East. Bush wants to state for the record, in a once-and-for-all fashion, exactly how the United States sees the situation, in terms discrete and general. The Palestinians...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 17, 2002 11:02 AM
As I've said many times before, Ken Layne understands the situation in the Middle East better than anyone....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2002 11:07 AM
All We are Saying Is: Give Appeasement a Chance Is the apparent incoherence of Bush's Middle East policy simply a clever contrivance, intended to disguise and deflect attention from the real underlying coherent strategy? Are the admonitions to Israel to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 15, 2002 10:48 AM
Here's another fascinating look into suicide bomber pedagogy and procedure from Paul McGeough, writing in Australia's The Age (via Tim Blair.) The whole system is extraordinarily well-organized, both pre- and post-explosion. Pre-explosion training begins with the Al Aqsa Brigade's "martyrdom...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 13, 2002 11:06 AM
Every time I think Alexander Cockburn has finally completed his long descent into madness, he somehow manages to find room to descend just a little more. Awhile back, Gary Farber, Matt Welch, and I commented on this peculiar article, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 12, 2002 08:57 AM
Wobblin' or Winkin'? "George is going wobbly, say the editors of the New Republic, "and so is his administration..." the hour is late for debater's points. Too many innocent Israelis and Palestinians have died. About this no decent person can...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 04:42 PM
You don't need me to tell you this, but... Lileks rules: If al-Qaeda had attacked European capitals, and the EU had marshaled its military forces to respond most of the critics would be far more supportive, because it was Europe...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 11, 2002 08:33 AM
Tony Blankley makes a pretty strong case that "Mr. Bush has been winking to us as much as he can" when it comes to Israel's campaign. And according to this article, Arab leaders are noticing all the winking, even if...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 06:08 PM
Look mom! I'm famous! I don't know how I managed to miss it till now, but I just realized that Glenn Reynolds has put up a Dr. Frank permalink on InstaPundit. I'm not worthy... but thanks, Professor!...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 02:02 PM
You can expect to hear a lot more of this argument over the next few days: Palestinian officials said the blast on a bus from the northern city of Haifa to Jerusalem shattered Israel's argument that the 12-day-old sweep for...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 01:11 PM
Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? A Matt Welch reader turned up the link to this open letter to "friends of President Bush" by diehard Saddam apologist Jude Wanniski. Welch's extensive commentary on it is well worth...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 10:34 AM
TNR's Lawrence Kaplan has a typically sharp analysis of the Bush administration's multiple personality disorder on Israel/Palestine. "The principal reason the Bush administration can't intervene effectively in the crisis is that it can't make up its mind," writes Kaplan. "Actually,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 10, 2002 09:56 AM
Rio de Janeiro's tourist board is threatening legal action against The Simpsons, claiming that the episode "Blame it on Lisa" has hurt the tourist industry with its unfavorable portrayal of Rio's rat- and monkey-infested streets. "What really hurt was the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 05:20 PM
Grosso, indeed... Tim Blair has discovered a possible OBL "Boys From Brazil" plot: The world's first cloned human embryo is the son of a rich Arab, according to claims made by Severino Antinori, the Italian fertility specialist. Dr Antinori said...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 02:48 PM
I heard Daniel Pipes expound the "two speeches in one" analysis of Bush's remarks on the O'Reilly Factor last week. A reader forwarded me the link to this LA Times article where he makes the point more systematically. Whence comes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 10:47 AM
Welch takes on Eric Alterman, reads his mail, and tells it like it is....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 9, 2002 09:11 AM
Sir, I admit your general rule that every poet is a fool but as you yourself should serve to show it every fool is not a poet. Gary Farber emailed me this link: bin Laden's poetry, found in an al...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 7, 2002 12:29 PM
Choice... Two Deaf Lesbians is not a rock band, but rather a couple of, um, deaf lesbians, Sharon and Candy, one of whom impregnated herself with sperm from a deaf man in hopes of fulfilling their cherished dream of passing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2002 11:50 AM
Dr. Frank, Superstar Well, not really. But I do feel like a big shot now that favorite warblogger Matt Welch put a Dr. Frank link on his revamped front page. Not just me: he's got a pretty comprehensive list of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 6, 2002 11:48 AM
That Speech Again Is the sky falling? Stephen Green says it isn't. Robert Fisk says it is, but he's got a different set of criteria, I suspect. As Fisk spins it, Bush's remarks were decidedly unwobbly. Here's how he boils...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2002 06:17 PM
The Wall Street Journal's editors find a "silver lining" in Bush's cave-in on the Israeli offensive, and say that it will be worth it if it allows him to "re-focus the war on terror back on Iraq." Peggy Noonan thinks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 5, 2002 11:11 AM
Coddle, Denounce, Coddle, Denounce den Beste has posted the photographs of the weaponry captured at Arafat's headquarters, which include many materials banned by the Oslo accords. As he says, it's damning. Should this make a difference? You bet. It proves...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 11:17 AM
'I never thought they would fire live rounds.' Speaking of Europe's dumbest peace activists, they were surprised to learn that it can be quite dangerous in the middle of a combat zone. Here's the full quote from Kate Edwards, a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 12:52 AM
This is a couple of days old now, but David Warren's latest take on Arafat and Israel is well worth reading: European "peace activists" were used as a front by the Palestinians in a clever operation to smuggle several of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 4, 2002 12:51 AM
Still skeptical about the Axis of Evil? More on Saddam's anti-US terrorist program. Iraq planned clandestine attacks against American warships in the Persian Gulf in early 2001, according to an operative of Iranian nationality who says he was given the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 3, 2002 11:18 AM
Gatekeepers! Once again I'm going to risk redundancy by mentioning that Lileks has another great Bleat on the blogging, old media/new media topic. His ideal paper would be mine as well: If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 10:40 AM
Layne answers his mail, too. Damn-- I've got to get on the ball, here. Somebody, anybody: send me some hysterical hate mail, relatively easy to pick apart and ridicule, and preferably with at least one reference to something that is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 2, 2002 12:53 AM
Dr. Weevil answers his mail (unlike some doctors I know.) Result: considerable amusement. Lesson: think twice about sending hate mail to a man who writes this well and knows the word "litotes."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2002 11:27 AM
Sadly, I think Perry de Havilland is probably right about The Palestinian Gtterdmmerung and the irrelevance of Arafat. Killing Arafat won't make much difference; neither will allowing him to survive. The killings will go on, the bombings will go on,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on April 1, 2002 11:26 AM
The Alterman Universe This article on Yasser Arafat ("the world's most exalted political prisoner") is, I suppose, the sort of op-ed Eric Alterman would like to see more of in the US media. (It's from the Guardian, naturally.) Like many...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 31, 2002 09:08 AM
Layne returns... ...bless him. He forgot to pay his VeriSign bill. But he knows how to handle a gun. He also understands the situation in the Middle East: Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia's direct role in the terrorism against Israel...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 30, 2002 09:43 AM
No Fair! The Other Side has all the Good Pundits! Eric Alterman's article on the "competing narratives" of the Israel/Palestinian conflict has generated a fair amount of comment in the blogosphere. Alterman believes that the American "punditocracy" is overwhelmingly dominated...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 29, 2002 12:12 PM
Nuts When it comes to left-wing conspiracy theorist nut cases (agents provocateurs?) I've always found Alexander Cockburn to be a bit more palatable than, say, Oliver Stone. I suppose that's partly because the English get automatic easy extra credit points...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 12:38 PM
What, no video? Email from the grave attacks Friedman plan. Arabic language newspaper said today that it had received an email claiming to be from Osama bin Laden that attacked a Saudi peace for the Middle East and urged the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 11:36 AM
This piece, a silly defense of Saddam Hussein and "Ba'athist governments," is the "stupidest article" Iain Murray has read in a long time. Me, too. The author, Neil Clark, laments that Iraq "struggles to get a fair hearing." He proposes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 10:33 AM
Andrew Sullivan has a strident "reality check" on Israel/Palestine and the Passover bombing: Can we please take a little break from the "pursuit of peace" in order to acknowledge what we have just learned about the Middle East? We have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 28, 2002 12:09 AM
A connection failure has occurred Believe me, I would love to check out Peter Pribik's brand new blog. He's a swell guy and a terrific host. People I trust tell me it's great. But I've never been able to load...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 11:59 PM
Mark Steyn's latest column on "the Gallic Shrug" has some great lines, including this: "Bush is crippled," said someone else, "by his Rambo view of the world." "I very much doubt Bush reads Rimbaud," I said. Joking aside, he makes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 12:43 PM
Once again, Lileks's latest Screed (a skewering of Nick Kristoff's silly "Sue Saddam" column) has so many good lines that it's impossible decide which to quote. Here's the conclusion: noting the well-known barbarism of Saddam's regime, which includes torturing and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 12:24 PM
Tim Blair is all over John Pilger's latest, pointing out yet another case of gratuitous inflation of Marc Herold's widely-debunked study of Afghan civilian deaths. He points out another instance of Pilger's imaginative use of statistics, and writes: Weirdly, Pilger's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 27, 2002 10:16 AM
Belligerati Salman Rushdie had a good piece in Saturday's Guardian: As John Lloyd wrote in the New Statesman recently, "Much of the intellectual left in Europe cleaves to a view of America as the largest danger in the modern world."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 26, 2002 11:49 AM
Michael Leeden on Iran: The mullahs want to turn Afghanistan into a second Lebanon, for they believe that if they can drive America out of Afghanistan, the Iranian people will lose hope for a democratic change within Iran. In their...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 25, 2002 03:54 PM
We are Normal, and We want our Freedom My girlfriend has been here for a week now, and things are just starting to get "settled," by which I mean I can envision, with a bit of squinting and liberal use...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 11:13 PM
Quote of the day Krauthammer on "exit strategies:" "Exit strategy" applies only to wars of choice. You can choose to quit Vietnam or Somalia or Kosovo. The war on radical Islam is a war of necessity. Wars of necessity have...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 12:51 PM
Eric Alterman attacks! In this article, the Nation writer attempts to "take down" Andrew Sullivan and blogging in general. Alterman has a point that Sullivan's repeated attempts to brand mainstream Democrats as "anti-war" tend to ring hollow. But to be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 22, 2002 11:02 AM
I'm sure everybody has already linked to Lileks's brilliant new Screed on Michael Moore, but why should that stop me? You'll be tempted to read it with a fork, but use a spoon to get every drop: Absolute ego corrupts,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 11:53 PM
SLA Murder Trial Nostalgic Trip Back To More Innocent Time INDEPENDENCE, MO The murder trial of three Symbionese Liberation Army members is providing Americans with a nostalgic escape to a carefree, more innocent time. "Oh, man, Patty Hearst and the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 21, 2002 10:21 AM
By the way, thanks to Matt Welch for sending so many compliments my way recently. In one recent post, he even says I'm "unnaturally youthful looking." I can't take credit for that. While the ring was in my possession, I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2002 08:17 AM
A couple of great bleats from Lileks over the last couple of days. Yesterday's was on Geraldo and the Arab media. Before it gets serious near the end, it has this perfect parody of Geraldo rhetoric: It was here, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 19, 2002 08:09 AM
Well, you know it was a good party when you miss the whole next day. I admit, I drank too much wine at Peter Pribik's blogger party the other night. I spent yesterday in a fairly delicate state. It was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 15, 2002 08:10 AM
Make 'em Switch Blogs Andrew Sullivan, pointing out that William Shatner now has a blog, asks "should the rest of us retire immediately?" I'm not sure. Here's Bill: I also had a funny moment with Eddie Murphy, when we were...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2002 08:10 PM
Ken Layne's got some great commentary on this Observer article about the al Qaeda training camps: This article is proof that much more is happening in Europe than politicians and pundits complaining about the U.S.-led war. The police and intelligence...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 12, 2002 11:59 AM
Tiptoe through the Guardian I believe this rumination on the inevitable outcome of displaying the Ten Commandments in public wins the prize for the most fully-realized example of Guardian rhetoric and sophisticated analysis: The logical limit of the Supreme Court's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 6, 2002 11:34 AM
The Decency Deficit What a sick freak. Mr. Rall had better pray he never meets any of these women-- not a jury in the world would convict any one of them for beating him into a jelly. And honestly, what...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 5, 2002 12:18 AM
Marketing the Left "Left-Wingers Fall out over Claims of Censorship." The New Statesman and the London Review of Books have been refusing to publish anything other than anti-American content, according to this article in the Telegraph. Well, we knew that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2002 11:25 PM
More from Amiel on British anti-Semitism Barbara Amiel, in a post script to her column on the Muslim Gallup poll, writes succinctly on the question of anti-Zionism vs. anti-Semitism in Britain that I was wrestling with much more longwindedly below:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 4, 2002 10:48 AM
Monica: I had really gone to Washington as a short pit stop on my way to graduate school. Larry: And you wanted to be a what? Monica: Forensic psychologist. Larry: Really? Monica: Yes. Larry: Really? So that means examining, uh,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 2, 2002 01:00 AM
Jews Andrew Sullivan is on to something when he says that Mark Steyn is onto something in his latest column. (How's that for blog-parody fodder?) I'm sure that there is not one blog-reading soul who has not read Steyn's latest...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on March 1, 2002 05:42 PM
Why do we hate us? Yep, we've got our own wackos. The non-Islamic kind. Like these ones in Kallispell, Montana. All I can say is, I'm glad this situation is in the capable hands of Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2002 05:11 PM
Word on the Street is, the man is coming down on the people Ken Layne watched the Grammys last night so we wouldn't have to. His play-by-play is by turns funny, sad, thoughtful, silly, and insightful-- and honest: even he...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 28, 2002 10:54 AM
Ken Layne's Foxblog column yesterday was a great piece about the out-of-touch music biz-- it's densely packed with terrific links, and I urge everyone who hasn't already done so to read it and follow all the links as you go....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 05:54 PM
Lileks Time James Lileks really goes to town on that "Guardian undercover at the Olive Garden" article by Matthew Engels that I blogged yesterday. I'm not going to pull out any quotes, because I can't choose. Oh, yes I am....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 11:52 AM
Instantman strikes! Wow, Instapundit-ed overnight! To all the thousands (yes, thousands) of folks who are stopping by to read Tristin's beautiful essay, it's here. Welcome, new readers. If you do stick around to read some of this other stuff, thanks....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 27, 2002 09:37 AM
Here's another pointed review of Empire, the dreadful best-seller by Michael Hardt and convicted Red Brigade terrorist Antonio Negri, which celebrates the irrepressible lightness and joy of being Communist." Hardt and Negri seek to update Marxs Capital for the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 09:24 PM
Our Canadian Friends, eh? A dimwitted "humorist" in the Canadian hipster music publication Trucker Magazine has managed to come up with what is arguably the most offensive 9/11-related document since Elizabeth Wurtzel's notorious turtleneck interview. The "gag" is a faux-advice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 06:38 PM
The American Soul wot I found in the Olive Garden The Guardian's Matthew Engel had dinner at an Olive Garden in Birmingham, Alabama and believes he has discovered the key to understanding the current state of Euro-American relations: outside the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 26, 2002 10:16 AM
I promise. Todd Gitlin has weighed in on the meaning of the new SLA trials in the LA Times. He makes a good case (not difficult) that the SLA "soldiers" were the very worst of the worst, "gangsters pretending to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 25, 2002 12:26 PM
I've been wondering when it would finally happen: Andrew Sullivan's Sunday Times column today is about blogging. It's a good article, though there's nothing very surprising in it. The account of the evolution of andrewsullivan.com from vanity site to warblog,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 24, 2002 12:16 PM
I've received a great deal of feedback on my post in response to the SF Bay Guardian article on the SLA and 60s radicalism. Thanks for all the email: I'm still working through it, but it may be awhile before...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 23, 2002 06:09 PM
Slobo-google-athon! Matt Welch's suggestion that blogosphere denizens google the hell out of the list of signatories to one or two of the web's Free Slobodon Now! petitions has begun to gather steam. So far, they've turned up some La Rouchies...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 03:50 PM
Comments on Daniel Pearl The best: this moving piece by Pearl's widow, Mariane, and this WSJ editorial. The worst: this tepid, yet inflammatory message to "the Muslim World" from Louis Farrakhan, urging, in effect, that future victims be chosen more...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 02:21 PM
Robot Mountain Ken Layne has been channelling my thoughts. Either that or the elegantly under-employed, on the wings of desperation, tend to alight on the same weird psychic mountain from time to time. (It tends to be toward the end...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 02:16 AM
My friend Tristin is the publicist at Lookout Records and the smartest person I know. One of her dearest and oldest friends was on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 01:00 AM
In a major policy reversal on international hostage-taking, Bush administration officials said Wednesday that the United States might sometimes pay ransom to kidnappers. This, as Bill Quick says, is a lousy idea. The next sentence: however, the officials also stressed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 22, 2002 12:50 AM
Middle-Eastern Terrorists and the People who Impersonate them on Message Boards Best of the Web conceded yesterday that the message-board post by "Edward Said," (mentioned below) in which he issued the Altman-esque warning that he could not bear to live...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 21, 2002 10:31 AM
That's no femme, that's my wife! Matt Welch had an "enough already with the French-bashing" post last week, concluding with "...if you want to keep condemning all the French, realize that you are, in fact, condemning my wife." *Blush* For...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 20, 2002 05:03 PM
Steven den Beste, once again, minces no words in his reply to Euro-carping about the US: Being told "You're making a mistake" is one thing, especially if the mistake is explained in a convincing fashion. Being told "You are stupid,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 08:45 PM
Yet another great column by Barbara Amiel in the Telegraph, which includes yet another hypothesis to explain Euro-lefty "resistance" to the word "evil": Some of those members of the social democratic international (including critics at the Guardian and the Independent)...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 19, 2002 11:16 AM
Tim Blair makes a good point about Chris Patten's characteristic Euro-rhetoric about terrorism, "root causes," and "symptoms." European states have often been sensibly unsentimental and pragmatic about cracking down on their own domestic terrorists, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 08:45 PM
Moira Breen has the best comment so far on the modern-"Moors"-demand-apology story: Reading of the "Moors" demand that Isabel and Ferdinand be dug up and repudiated, I pondered that I have no idea who my ancestors were or what they...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 18, 2002 07:14 PM
Highlights from the Guardian 1.) Scenes from a religion of peace in gun-free Britain. 2.) You know what your problem is? You're all a bunch of Straussians! 3.) Take a pill, Terry. 4.) There's a fine line between anti-Semitism and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 17, 2002 01:07 AM
Edward Luttwak breaks down the Bush administration's tri-partite "axis of evil" strategy in today's Sunday Times: Of course in each case the American aim is different: to induce Irans turn away from extremism to the moderation so evidently favoured by...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2002 08:04 PM
Mmmm.... Rubber Chicken 'n' Strawberries Matt Welch has been reading Ralph Nader's campaign memoir, and is apparently in the process of writing an essay about it. Along the way, he's throwing a few amusing scraps (teasers?) into the blogosphere: this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 16, 2002 06:46 PM
Ken Layne has a hilarious post on this article on how Noam Chomsky can't get arrested, even in Turkey. By the way, Layne has really been on a roll lately. On the outside chance that there's anyone who reads this...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 08:42 PM
Andrew Sullivan had this to say about Colin Powell's appearance on MTV: Contrast Bill Clinton's excruciating dialogue with MTV viewers not so long ago with Colin Powell's masterful, engaged colloquy. No boxers or briefs questions. No attempt to pander shamelessly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 06:15 PM
Jaw-jaw Binks The folks at Libertarian Samizdata have relentlessly dissected this sophisticated article by Chris Patten in the Financial Times. I've just pulled out a couple of notable quotations, but it's definitely worth reading the whole thing. Tom Burroughes: The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 04:36 PM
I've complained before that it's often hard to tell whether British irony is intentional or not; it is my firm belief that they aren't always sure themselves. (The brilliant yet subtle Ben Sheriff once quoted Evelyn Waugh to me in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 12:51 PM
The Actor Factor Actor James Woods, who witnessed a "dress rehearsal" for the WTC hijackings in a flight on August 1, was on the O'Reilly Factor last night, telling the story in vivid detail. Here's the transcript. The whole thing...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 15, 2002 10:52 AM
The Valentine Detector Van? The Loony Detector Van, You Mean... Happy Valentine's Day. Unless you live in Saudi Arabia. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Evil has banned Valentine's Day in the Saudi Kingdom. (NB:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2002 04:17 PM
"The 60s were full of challenge," writes J.H. Tompkins in the SF Bay Guardian, "and although I'm not a revolutionary now, in my heart, I'm still a revolutionary then." Huh? Anyone who retains romantic notions about 60s radicalism can instantly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 14, 2002 12:39 AM
Ben Sheriff has an extensive and thoughtful post on the "simplism" accusation and the education of British elites. Well worth reading....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 05:38 PM
Sophisticated I've been thinking some more about Michael Kelly's memorable slogan, "simplisme works," mentioned below. Of course, as amusing as the notion may be, "simplisme" alone won't meet the case here. We face a complex strategic situation, and we need...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 13, 2002 01:06 PM
"It is a time when bad people have strong urges to let their ends justify their means." Best of the Web has a link today to a "memorandum of law" filed in Ramsey Clark's lawsuit on behalf of the Camp...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 12, 2002 11:16 PM
Real Power always Finds a Way Andrew Sullivan had a terrific column on Euro-resentment of American power in yesterday's Sunday Times: If Europeans resent America's power, they need to ask themselves: would they like to confront global terrorism without it?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 11, 2002 10:01 AM
The Blog Maestro Strikes Again Nothing gets by Tim Blair. Check out his comparison of the press obituaries of "heavy smoker and drinker" Princess Margaret, who died at 71, with those of vegetarian marijuana enthusiast Linda McCartney, who died at...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2002 10:53 AM
Let's be perfectly blunt Thomas Friedman provides a "blunt answer" to the common Arab question about the alleged Jewish media conspiracy to smear the Saudis and Islam: Maybe, just maybe, many Americans are upset because 15 Saudis took part in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 10, 2002 10:13 AM
Orwell Again and Again Orwell's famous essay on Politics and the English Language has been the springboard for countless opinion columns ever since it was written (how many, I wonder?) Here's the latest one, by Jonah Goldberg, and it's a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 8, 2002 11:48 AM
The Freedom of Irrelevance Iain Murray once again provides some useful perspective on the British press and the reaction to the Camp X-Ray situation. As he points out, editorials in the Telegraph and the Times have "calmly and capably refuted...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 7, 2002 11:27 AM
Down at the cafe CIA director George Tenet warned Congress today that even though there are 1,000 al-Qaeda operatives in custody, they are still a major threat who may be planning more strikes at high-profile targets. Grim tidings (though in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2002 02:09 PM
What a week I'm having First Moira Inappropriate Breen put the Blogs of War on her "blogs of the week" list; now Little Green Footballs have identified yours truly as their first blogga of the week. Owing to that and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 6, 2002 12:55 PM
Matt Welch on the "Axis of Evil": Without commenting on the propriety of Bushs usage of axis, I find it interesting how many on the Left have a knee-jerk hostility to the word evil, and are still hung up about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2002 04:53 PM
Define Terrible... Edward Said, writing in the Egyptian publication Al-Ahram online, says that "living in the United States at this moment is a terrible experience." Personally, I can think of worse places to be living, like Ramallah, or Cairo, or...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 5, 2002 12:49 PM
Tipton Like Theodore Dalrymple, I disapprove of the contempt for the West that is all-too-common among our intellectuals and cultural elite. I agree that it can do real damage, and can lead impressionable people astray. It is dishonorable and, almost...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 4, 2002 09:42 AM
England Swings... Ben Sheriff has managed, with a single link, to shatter my tenuous peace of mind. Man has sex with goat in front of packed commuter train: Steven Hall, a 23-year-old unemployed (a mercy, that) chef "lassoed the animal...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on February 1, 2002 11:47 AM
Molly, Moira, and the San Francisco Discussion Where I come from (the San Francisco Bay Area-- one of "the enclaves") you often find yourself in the midst of what people like to call "political discussions." These "discussions" are not conversations....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2002 03:47 PM
Liberally Illiberal Andrew Sullivan, commenting on "the spin" on the American Freshman Survey of college students, says, correctly, that it shows "how useless many contemporary political labels are." The headline in many stories including this one was College Freshmen More...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 31, 2002 01:49 PM
Now it Can be Told... Pilger reveals the shocking truth about who the real terrorists are. Maybe you'd better sit down. Prepare yourself for a shock. It turns out, it's the Americans. All the conventional bases are covered with the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 30, 2002 09:04 PM
As the Europeans continue to denounce US policy toward terrorists as a draconian abuse of human rights, their governments are quietly and efficiently rounding up and expelling the terrorists within their own borders, sending them to face human rights-laden justice...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 29, 2002 07:23 AM
Now let me see if I've got this straight: the British media, contrary to what appear to be the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of ordinary people in Britain, have been pushing the view that the treatment of the terrorists...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2002 03:35 PM
Jeez, it's hard catching up, when you've missed a whole day... It appears that Daniel Pearl, the missing American journalist, was indeed kidnapped by a Pakistani Islamist group. They call themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 28, 2002 12:35 PM
The king of the Powell Guys, Colin Powell himself, has adopted the Guardipendent line and has formally "urged" that the Camp X-Ray prisoners be granted POW status. (Link via Drudge.) What is he, running for EU president? The memo was...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 12:44 PM
More details on John Walker Lindh's personal journey of self-discovery. According to people who knew him during a six month stint at an Islamic school in Pakistan, he was keenly interested in militant Islam, particularly the part where you get...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 01:09 AM
That Damian Penny-- he really finds the links no one else can reach (or is it the other way round?) A case in point is this article about some controversial remarks on terrorism by actor James Woods. The transcript is...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 26, 2002 12:09 AM
Matt Welch also points out Howard Zinn's latest column, which cites the extremely questionable Mark Herold study of Afghan civilian casualties. The Herold study has been as roundly debunked as anything in the blogosphere, including by me. His number of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 25, 2002 06:49 PM
The Free Marketplace of Ideas More on British anti-Semitism. This Forward article (via InstaPundit) is a report on a recent New Statesman cover story called "A Kosher Conspiracy" about the influence of The Jew on the British media and government....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 24, 2002 07:02 PM
My last post on Camp X-ray I have made a promise to myself and God to lay off the Camp X-ray thing for awhile. Here's the short version: Euro-press hysteria has no perceptible effect on US policy or public opinion....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 09:29 PM
Ideas for future Mirror editorials We must be sweet, and tactful and discreet And when they've suffered defeat We mustn't let them feel upset or ever get The feeling that we're cross with them or hate them, Our future policy...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 08:35 PM
Felled once again by the relentless Aussie satire machine Tim Blair takes a look into Robert Altman's future. Once again, unable to comment due to uncontrollable fit of choking and snorting. Tears, too. It's like being maced.......
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 23, 2002 10:09 AM
Here's George "anti-everything" Monbiot lecturing Richard Perle on the folly of Camp X-ray and American military strategy during an appearance on the BBC's NewsNight yesterday: Richard, the really daft thing about this-- and we've had Donald Rumsfeld boasting about how...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 22, 2002 12:25 AM
Our man in Australia, Tim Blair, has tracked down the emails between Richard Reid and Mullah Omar....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:53 PM
Megan McArdle has a great post today about European posturing about international standards of behavior. She has this exactly right: if it were 4,000 British or French civilians dead, their response wouldn't be a detached "well there are rules that...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:32 PM
If We Put Hoods on the Terrorists, the Terrorists Will Have Won Robert Fisk's latest piece of disingenuous casuistry is almost identical to all his previous p.s of d.c.: by placing hoods on al-Qaeda prisoners, we are playing into bin...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 05:26 PM
Britain and US in rift over terrorist prisoners... ...says the headline of this article in the Daily Telegraph. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 21, 2002 12:45 AM
Biff Bang POW For some time now, Damian Penny and his readers have been engaged in a lively debate about Camp X-ray and whether the prisoners there are POWs as defined by the Geneva Convention. I've been following it, and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 10:10 PM
Once again, I have to ask: doesn't the EU have a regulation standards subgroup for the control of this?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 12:06 PM
"It's America's World Now," says John Humphrys in the Sunday Times, "but not necessarily forever." Actually, that's what the headline says. In the course of the meandering article, however, Humphrys, with seeming reluctance, reaches something like the opposite conclusion. (Yet...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 20, 2002 11:59 AM
A Flock o' Blog People... Perry de Havilland of Libertarian Samizdata continues the ornithological theme with this interesting simile: We blogs are not trying to replace the established media, but rather we have popped up to fill an empty but...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 19, 2002 01:02 AM
Let's Roll Redux This item is primarily about the Israeli retaliatory strike, but it includes a dramatic account of the resistance to the bat mitzvah attack: about 100 people were inside a banquet hall celebrating a bat mitzvah, or Jewish...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 18, 2002 11:14 AM
Use a #2 Pencil Saddam Hussein suggests a new euphemism for being bombed into submission: "sitting an examination." Apparently, he's been studying for his midterms and he feels pretty well-prepared. "Will the performance of one who has sat an examination...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 17, 2002 11:38 AM
More info on John Reid and al Qaeda has been retrieved from a computer in Kabul. There appears to be pretty good evidence that Reid is the "brother Abdul Ra'uff," who went on a series of target-scouting missions that match...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2002 10:22 AM
Bees, landmines, pizzas, guitars According to the Financial Times, the US army is using bees equipped with data-sending microchips ("smart tags") to detect landmines: Bees have a liking for the explosive TNT. When tagged bees are released close to areas...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 16, 2002 12:09 AM
The anti-warblog manifesto has arrived. UPDATE: Most everyone has commented on this, as you might expect-- just click as many of the "good ones" to the left as you have time for. (It's hard to keep up with all the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 10:45 PM
...if you want to feel ill. I mean Charles Johnson's eviscerating commentary on James Bennet's disgraceful apologia (masquerading as a straight news item) on behalf of terrorist Raed al-Karmi in today's New York Times. Un-bloody-believable. Says Johnson: I don�t know...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 03:29 PM
The Nader Factor I caught Ralph Nader on the O'Reilly Factor last night, and so did Andrew Sullivan: his quotations and commentary are spot-on and worth reading. Favorite Nader quote: See, what we weren't smart enough in doing is pitting...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 02:24 PM
More detail on Arafat's Death Ship. US intelligence played an integral role in the Israeli commando raid. Colin Powell, commenting on the $10 million illegal weapons cargo, sees things clearly: "this kind of action is condemnable."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 15, 2002 10:06 AM
"Hoping that the Russian image of a bear, constantly drinking vodka, will dissipate..." The weirdest part of Pravda Online is the "Russia Makes it Funny" section. It's intended as a digest of light-hearted, amusing, or bizarre stories. "On this site,"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 09:54 PM
...vs. the complacency of the Media People? Virginia Postrel tries to deflate the t. of the B. P., as Jonah Goldberg did last week. (On Goldberg's attempt, see my comments below, from Saturday's blog barrage.) She obviously knows what she's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 14, 2002 09:46 AM
The New Statesman has some good news and some bad news about the war. First, the good news: The war has been "a resounding success." True, Osama Bin Laden himself has not been found (though the only reason may be...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 09:31 PM
Hogan's Heroes? The German forces bound for Kabul are having a bit of trouble getting their act together. According to Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Anybody looking for reasons why the United States prefers to rely on its...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 07:29 PM
Political Magic Redux Natalie Solent (libertarian, science fiction fan, sewing enthusiast and blogger extraordinaire) stumbled across my half-baked little disquisition on "the politics of magic," and had this comment: I found this particularly interesting because I could criticize it quite...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 03:23 PM
Behold, the Awesome Power of Professor Reynolds A single mention in InstaPundit yesterday managed to sextuple the normal Blogs of War traffic. And the hits just keep on comin'. New readers: thanks for checking me out. Professor Reynolds: thanks, as...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 10:58 AM
Hold it! This doesn't make any sense! I believe Ben Sheriff is the first warblogger to note this amusing quotation from the Nation: [Ted] Rall has filed some of the best war reporting from Afghanistan by an American journalist. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 10:15 AM
Attending Services at McDonald's Not to get all "inside and egocentric" again, but I could really relate to Matt Welch's Tim Blair-spurred comments on going to McDonald's in Europe. I spend a fair amount of time in England, and I...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 13, 2002 01:49 AM
Post-PC Posts More great comments on "post-political correctness" from Jeff Jarvis: I welcome the Post PC era with with trumpets. Political Correctness is essentially undemocratic; it assumes that we are all too fragile to endure the open and frank debate...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 09:15 AM
Inside and Egocentric Jonah Goldberg has written another column about blogging ("whoring for hits again," as Bill Quick puts it.) As usual, he's got some great lines, including his parody of a self-regarding blog entry: "this morning Robert Wright responds...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 12, 2002 12:15 AM
Box o' bin Laden William Quick (not sure if he's still the Blogical Suspect-- he appears to have transmogrified into the Daily Pundit while my attention was elsewhere) has uncovered this item from Islamicnews.org: Saudi Arabia has remitted a sum...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 07:31 AM
"Proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman..."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:14 AM
Mark Steyn in the Spectator concedes that GWB "lacks the intelligence to hold down a really demanding job like columnist at the New York Times or Slate." Yet, he writes, "in the weeks before 11 September, having already spotted his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:13 AM
Catching up on the magazines that got crammed into the mailbox while I was away... There's an interesting article in a (relatively recent) New Republic by Martin Peretz on Islamo-fascist rhetoric and parallels from the Spanish Civil War, particularly the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 11, 2002 12:12 AM
Tim Blair, Aussie oppressor, funniest man in the blogosphere-- I can't even comment on this post because I'm laughing too hard....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 10, 2002 11:09 AM
Plug-a-thon (1) Better late than never, the Blogs of War is now jumping on the Claire Berlinski bandwagon. You can check out the first chapter of her new novel "Loose Lips" here; you can purchase the book here; and here...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 9, 2002 10:27 PM
John Walker got his start in the Islamo-fascist game at the Mill Valley Islamic Center; Richard Reid learned the ropes through people he met at the Brixton Mosque and Islamic Community Center in South London; James McLintock, the young Scotsman...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 8, 2002 04:15 AM
Frodo W. Bush? I think I understand why Andrew Sullivan feels he needs to do his part to burnish GWB's image here and there whenever the opportunity presents itself. I tend to agree with him that Bush is often misunderestimated,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2002 01:48 PM
Gone Native? Faithful friend, correspondent and Blogs of War critic Tristin writes: "I like your blog but it has gotten way British... you sound like you could use a mass dose of Temptation Island or something. You are about 26...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 7, 2002 03:15 AM
Mullah Omar's Great Escape The Blogs of War reported yesterday that Mullah Omar had been captured (based on a Guardian article about the galvanizing power of US bombs.) As it happens rumors of his collaring were greatly exaggerated: the wascally...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 01:19 PM
The Taliban's Chamber of Horrors Even in view of the well-known shameless barbarism of the Taliban, this account of the punishment meted out to Red Cross worker Saed Abdullah for the crime of possessing a couple of Bibles still managed...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 6, 2002 01:14 PM
Rambunctious Irrelevance... ...or, Left-wing Columnists Say the Darnedest Things Andrew Sullivan (whose new website design looks great, by the way) makes an excellent point, in the course of commenting on the much-commented-upon Michael Kinsley "inner Ashcroft" column. Kinsley then makes...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:38 AM
Clash of the Titans Our man in Australia Tim Blair, fresh from his recent bout with John Pilger, takes on Barry Crimmins and mops the floor with him. A dirty job, but somebody had to do it....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:37 AM
A couple of great posts recently on Iain Murray's Edge of England's Sword blog. This one is a spot-on critique of Walter Williams's weird "Who May Harm Whom" column. This one is as clear and reasonable an expression of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 5, 2002 03:36 AM
I've been meaning to mention Moira Breen's excellent little essay on the American "vice of niceness," which she casts as "the loss of the gift of contempt." We operate not by more formal codes of manners but by a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 4, 2002 03:17 AM
QuasiPundit is right. I need to be a little more skeptical about the Washington Times. (It's cold and dark here in Hobbiton-- and we gets our news where we may, don't we Precious? Our internet connections is so... slow and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2002 03:58 AM
VIII is Enough I'm still having trouble believing that anyone bothered to read the lengthy account of my rustic Norfolk New Years Eve carefully enough to notice, but several readers wrote in to call attention to a glaring typo. The...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 3, 2002 03:56 AM
God Rules OK Obviously, I'm glad he turned out to be something other than an Arab terrorist, but the Boca Raton guy who chose to spend his New Year's Day flying around in a little plane sky-writing "God is Great"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 04:55 AM
Democratic Party Plans to Commit Suicide At least, that's how I read this report on Democratic plans to base their future electoral strategy around the claim that the Republicans are just as bad as the Taleban. According to Newsweek's Howard...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 04:55 AM
">Afghanistan: a Land of Many Contrasts. Discount rates available....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:12 AM
You think you have a thesis, but you don't know what it is... ...do you, Mr. Jones? I mentioned Terry Jones's silly anti-war Observer piece in passing as an example of British "isolationist" tendencies, intending to come back to it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:09 AM
There was an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post on the World War II V-2 terror bombings, Churchill, and us, and it's worth reading. Faced with the demoralizing power of the silent rockets, Churchill considered using poison gas against the Germans,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 2, 2002 02:07 AM
Cheers to Tony Adragna, who included a warm holiday greeting to everyone in the New Year's Eve edition of the Quasipundit blog watch. What a class act. Mine said "don't go away, Frank." Well, I've been trying; I have to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on January 1, 2002 10:51 AM
"Teenager Forced Bystanders to Kiss Severed Human Head," is probably the weirdest headline of a weird week. But there must be something in the air. Have you seen al Qaeda's latest hit video? THE video begins innocently enough: a wildlife...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 12:09 PM
A while back I mentioned that they had burned a giant Osama bin Laden effigy in Suffolk for this past Guy Fawkes Day. Ben Sheriff provides a time-line of other popular villains burned in effigy in place of "the Guy."...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 31, 2001 03:54 AM
Just in case there's anyone out there who has yet to read Mark Steyn's Spectator piece on European anti-Semitism and the on-going US-Israel vs. Europe-Arab alignment, here it is. He manages to pack a great deal of trenchant observation and...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2001 03:39 PM
One Ring to Rule them All And, speaking of hobbits ("real" hobbits, not just the good people of rural England) I finally saw the Lord of the Rings. This is a movie I have been waiting for for practically my...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 29, 2001 12:17 AM
RICHARD REID VS. JOHN WALKER As more information comes in about the Man with the Exploding Shoes, he is starting to seem a bit like our own John Walker. According to this report in the Times, Richard Reid (apparently his...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 12:20 AM
I hope everybody had a good Christmas. I sure did. England seems to have invented much of what we think of as Christmas tradition (apart from all the religious stuff-- the year one and all that) and they tend to...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 27, 2001 12:19 AM
A CURE FOR THE NEW STATESMAN BLUES A good piece by Henry Porter in Sunday's Observer on Doves and Hawks and who owes what sort of apology to whom. But it was not just the hawks who made a choice....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 03:52 PM
THOSE FUN-LOVIN' BRITISH LEFTIES: From the New Statesman: Last week we asked the question on-line: Should Israel topple Yasser Arafat? 7% said yes 89% said no 4% were not sure This week, we ask: Should Christmas be abolished?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:27 AM
Though Jews comprise no more than 2 per cent of the US population... Hanukkah is now seen as an event that the US president must officially recognize and celebrate. His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, is Jewish and a couple of weeks...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:26 AM
Still in a weird state of psychological transition from shiny metropolis (London) to rustic hamlet (Colney, near Norwich.) While I was standing in line at Liverpool Street station, my "chosen" (as she was described later by one of the Norfolk...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 24, 2001 02:24 AM
DUMB AS A ROCK Owing to the time difference, I didn't hear about the man with the exploding shoes till this morning. I was, however, able to experience some of the excitement of the breaking news by reading Ken Layne's...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:11 AM
Andrew Sullivan has a terrific op-ed in the Sunday Times on anti-Semitism, Arab, French, and ours. It's not the main point of his argument, but I was struck by this passage: Many western liberals chided America for withdrawing from the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:10 AM
STROLLING DOWN MEMRI LANE Little Green Footballs points out the latest report from the Middle East Media Research Institute. This transcript of an Al-Jazeera TV talk show on bin Laden from 10 July reads like an Arab extremist McLaughlin Group:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:10 AM
WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? Apparently some kind soul has taken the professor's advice and paid the $12 "make the banner ad go away" fee for this blog. Many thanks, whoever you may be....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:09 AM
The Taleban: Safe Roads and Everything Else Robert Fisk continues his perverse drive to propound his deeply "alternative" point of view in this Independent article, evincing nostalgia for the Taleban's comforting law and order policy: If nothing else, the Taliban...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 23, 2001 04:08 AM
PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE CHOCOLATE HAND GRENADE! IT IS VERY DELICATE So reads a hand-printed sign on a display of Christmas gift ideas at Selfridge's department store in London. This "department" specializes in the ironic, the absurd, the whimsical:...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 22, 2001 04:45 AM
NOAM CHOMSKY DECAPITATED... ...by an enraged David Horowitz. Well, not literally... Here's the latest in the now venerable genre of Chomsky-debunking, a joint effort by the genre's co-founders David Horowitz and Ron Radosh. This mother of all bashings is richly...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 06:28 AM
LOW-FAT SPREAD: THE ENGLISHWOMAN'S VIEW OF AMERICAN PORN AND THE BEAUTY MYTH I've been meaning to mention Victoria Coren's column in Wednesday's Evening Standard, "Everything's Bigger in America." Noting that Nigella Lawson's cooking show has been described in the New...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 05:00 AM
Damian Penny and Charles "Little Green Footballs" Johnson and have already gone to the trouble of dissecting the study behind the latest Guardian editorial on Afghan casualties. (See also Bruce Rolston's more detailed examination of the data.) Here's my reaction....
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 21, 2001 04:01 AM
THE WILDERNESS FAMILY Here's a bizarre little story about dates imported illegally to Britain from Iraq. The importers are Voices in the Wilderness, a "non-violence group" opposed to the sanctions against Iraq. VitW activists spent yesterday distributing the dates, in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 01:41 PM
ANGLO-AMERICAN: TWO POWERS SEPARATED BY A COMMON HYPHEN We had a great time at the Skinner's Arms last night. My lovely little sister Christine is visiting London on Christmas break from Japan, where she is teaching English. Among other things,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 01:39 PM
Great stuff on Tim Blair's blog today, as usual. First, there's a letter from Glenn Sacks (who wrote one of those moronic SF Chronicle columns defending John Walker as a courageous free-thinker,) to his "critics," which I imagine would probably...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 11:41 AM
FRENCH IN ACTION: LESSON 1-- DIPLOMACY A diplomatic tempest has been brewing ever since the French ambassador to Great Britain was over-heard at a dinner party saying that all the problems in the world were caused by "that shitty little...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 04:50 AM
THE MORAL EQUIVALENCE GAME, PART II The odious George Monbiot was at it again yesterday, with a Guardian "comment and analysis" piece called "The Taliban of the West." (This link is to Monbiot's own site's posting of the article under...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 20, 2001 03:17 AM
I found Richard Cohen's article on anger very apt and powerful. It points to an important truth about our contemporary culture. We are not very comfortable with anger, and we often try to reason our way around it; anger embarrasses...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2001 03:55 AM
I'M NOT LET THING GO, I BELIEVE My girlfriend just received a greeting card from a friend who is travelling in Korea. It reads: Now and Forever I realize the best part of love is the thinnest slice and it...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 19, 2001 03:38 AM
SHAW'S STALIN, OUR BIN LADEN This editorial by the Telegraph's Robert Harris is one of the best so far on the Left's crisis of content when it comes to Afghanistan and bin Laden. On George Bernard Shaw's willful credulity about...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 10:21 AM
ALL THE RAGE IN EGYPT Here's a fascinating run-down of Egyptian pop culture's love-hate relationship with America, Western values, and good old fashioned common decency. It seems like it's mostly "hate" in all three categories: the mini-series based on the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 08:18 AM
THE HARRUMPHING CURMUDGEON Am I at war with the Guardian? That's what a reader charges. My indulgent, long-suffering girlfriend, who has had to learn to live with the fact that the sound of my rustling Guardian usually heralds a string...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 07:12 AM
THE GAME Anthony Lewis, in his farewell column, seals his legacy as a master of moral equivalence, managing to get in one last re-iteration of his trademark "Christian Fundamentalists are as bad as Islamists" theme: Islamic fundamentalism, rejecting the rational...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 18, 2001 07:03 AM
BAD NEWS: I just learned (from Eric Alterman's article in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine) that America has been taken over by a tiny cabal of right wing fanatics who control the government and through it the entire populace. Even though...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 17, 2001 10:08 AM
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH OSAMA Not really. That is, I don't think the actual Loony bin Laden was in Hyde Park today, though there were several guys with similar sartorial ideas. But after the news agent's hint about a...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 16, 2001 04:41 PM
THE IDEAL BLOG RATIO... ...I believe, is 2 funny posts to one tedious one. So, to balance things out, here's an addendum to my earlier thing about "Taleban-ification" and "cultural liberalism." The more I think about it, the more I'm...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 08:22 AM
THE TURNER PRIZE, OSAMA, THE USUAL SUSPECTS Mark Steyn brings it all together. Simon Wilson, communications director, the Tate Gallery, live from London: Well, it was a late entry, but the Turner judges were particularly taken by Osama's almost playful...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 15, 2001 02:54 AM
DECULTURATION II My beautiful, very significant, other and I were discussing the Tate Modern and the new Turner Prize winner (The Room with the Flickering Light, as seen on TV, brought to you by Madonna.) The naive query of the...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 10:18 AM
THE TALEBAN-IFICATION OF JOHN WALKER: I notice that Andrew Sullivan has now conceded a defeat of a sort, issuing a gracious (really!) partial retraction of his version of the "cultural liberalism created John Walker" theory. The letters he received on...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 08:32 AM
LONDON CALLING... I answering. No matter how late I manage to stay up on the first night after the SFO-LHR flight, I always jolt into irrevocable consciousness at around 5 am. Three hours later, I can't handle any more pretending...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 14, 2001 02:42 AM
RACIAL PROFILING NOT WIRED INTO BRAIN! That's the headline of this piece on a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I don't pretend to know everything about this study from the summary of it in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 11, 2001 05:42 PM
I just read Tim Blair's skewering of Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder's Salon interview and I still can't stop laughing. No link to the interview because it's "premium" content-- cue laugh-track, maestro. But that's not the funny part: it's a classic...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 06:52 PM
Hey, I just got some email from Moira Breen, whose Inappropriate blog is one of the best ones out there. It's weird to admit, and maybe a little silly, but it was a surreal experience, kind of like bumping into...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 06:07 PM
This WSJ op-ed on Geraldo Rivera on Fox hits the heads of many nails. I watch Fox all the time, like, I guess, the majority of American cable news junkies, and I love it. One of the things I like...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 10, 2001 10:55 AM
check out this unbelievably stupid article from Friday's SF Chronicle on his "journey of self-discovery." And what a long, strange trip it has been. From the warm, nurturing, tolerant bosom of an open-minded hippie family; to the vibrant, rough-and-tumble of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 10:11 PM
not surprisingly, most everyone has had their whack at the Robert Fisk Story (sub-heading: "left-wing journalist suffers for the sins of his Imperialist fathers-- and is glad to do it.") Ken Layne is the funniest so far. There's a serious...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 09:14 PM
in San Jose last night, so I'm a little slow today-- I'm really just emerging into consciousness now. I was away from the "data center" (i.e., laptop plus tv) for only around 24 hours, but I missed out on way...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 9, 2001 06:58 PM
Here's that statement by Ashcroft spokesperson Mindy Tucker (as quoted by Jim Lehrer) referred to below: "anyone who reported this morning that he [Ashcroft] criticized anyone who opposed him was absolutely wrong, and in doing so became a part of...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 03:39 AM
One particular sentence caught my eye: "Mullah Omar's apparent captivity will boost Western morale at a time when many thought that the goals of the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan were not being met." What is this guy talking about?...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 8, 2001 01:52 AM
Today's Wall Street Journal is giving its characteristic pro-government spin to the Ashcroft Senate hearing. "Ashcroft wins the civil liberties debate, " they bluntly proclaim, by facing down "the liberals." I hope (and I'm pretty certain) that this will not...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 7, 2001 10:53 AM
According to the Mirror, a man was fined 150 pounds for insisting on identifying himself as "English" on the British census form. Glenn Reynolds/Insta-Pundit (like the man in question) says that this demonstrates that "it's a crime to be English...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 10:36 PM
While Arab anti-semitism is no secret and comes as no real surprise, yet it still manages to express itself in astonishing forms. Earlier this year the Middle East Media Research Institute identified a widespread belief in the Arab world in...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 09:18 PM
Not surprisingly the tireless lefty-baiters among us have responded to Weisberg's Slate article, with more to come I'm sure. I am a bit surprised at the near-hysterical tone of some of them. Matt Welch gives it his famous "straw man"...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 04:12 PM
Here's Jacob Weisberg on the "Sontag Awards" phenomenon (i.e., pundits, webloggers, and commentators who have been having a grand old time challenging the sillier statements about the war by "the Left.") I agree that the anti-American nihilism represented by Chomksy,...
Posted in Dr. Frank's What's-it on December 6, 2001 03:38 PM